


faith

by flexible_flyer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: A coming of age story about an old person, Gen, Leadership, M/M, Mentorship, Original Character(s), loving attempts to reconcile new backstories with legends backstories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22214830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flexible_flyer/pseuds/flexible_flyer
Summary: For the captain and crew of the New Republic starhawkFaith, the day before the First Order destroys the Hosnian System is boring. Wedge wakes up early, an hour and a half before he’s supposed to be on duty. He makes a cup of caf in his quarters. He goes through his personal correspondence. Most of it is rather impersonal.
Relationships: Wedge Antilles/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	faith

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this… a long time ago, in a faraway place. (Fall of 2017, Chicago.) After Last Jedi came out, obviously a lot of things changed. I had to decide whether to change the ship, or ignore things about the movie, or write a story with a sad-ish ending. I chose the last one. Rebellions, hope, etc, but also, you deserve to know what you’re getting into. 
> 
> I finished writing it before Rise of Skywalker, so it has nothing to do with that film. Thanks to daring gus for beta reading.

For the captain and crew of the New Republic starhawk _Faith_ , the day before the First Order destroys the Hosnian System is boring. Wedge wakes up early, an hour and a half before he’s supposed to be on duty. He makes a cup of caf in his quarters. He goes through his personal correspondence. Most of it is rather impersonal.

Four lobbyists have somehow found this frequency, and are asking for him to make a stand on some issue or another to the senate. All four messages are deleted, unread. He replies to a perfectly innocuous message between old friends about what supplies are best brought to a potential picnic, bounced through seven different systems to be untraceable. 

The people he cares about enough to have his private frequency are mostly dreadful correspondents, or have a reason to stay out of touch, or both. He reads the headlines from a Corellian news service subscription. He hasn’t lived there for more than thirty years.

There’s one message from one of his former pilots, a smart young man who did his time flying for the New Republic, and then settled down and found a job with a longer life expectancy. He’s living in Republic City, and he’s going to be married next week, and is feeling sentimental about the old days. His note says that serving under Wedge made him the man he is today.

Wedge doesn’t know about that; and if it is true, he can’t be sure it’s a good thing. But it’s a nice thought. Nice to know he’s appreciated. He writes a reply, though he’s never quite sure how to respond to such things. He’s never been much for showing emotion, and putting it down in writing doesn’t make it any easier. But still, he tries. 

He has three different people forwarding him jokes, which he skims and deletes, only replying to Wes: _none of this is funny_ , even though some of it sort of is. Wes signed him up for an inspirational thought of the day, years ago now, which he’s never canceled. It’s usually bullshit, and he’s never understood meditation, but there’s something peaceful about staring at the wall and trying to find some pearl of wisdom in the bullshit.

The day before the First Order destroys the Hosnian System the inspirational thought of the day is: “When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose a side.”

Wedge spends half a minute considering what that means. He finishes his caf. He gets dressed and heads towards the briefing room. Caj is waiting for him in the hallway, holding a datapad, looking wide awake and too neat for the early hour.

“Hey, Lieutenant. How’s your morning been?”

“Fine, sir,” Caj says. She always stands up very straight, which draws attention to the fact that she’s a head taller than him, which is good. She has very dark blue eyes, and keeps her hair shorn so sort he can’t guess at the color. She’s been his aide for two months now, and they’re still getting used to each other.

“Good to hear it. I suppose you have our schedule for the day?”

“Yes, sir.”

It’s been two months, and she has only recently stopped snapping to attention when he walks into the room. He swears, they train their officers too well these days. When he was her age—

—Well, when he was her age, he was flying for the Rebellion, the least formal military force imaginable. They were just about to him promote him because he was one of two pilots to come back from the Death Star run. That probably wasn’t a great way to run things either. 

He’s been in the military for a long time, a lot longer than he ever expected. He knows how important military discipline is to keeping things together. Etiquette, though, can fuck right off.

Caj is exceptionally competent. He just wishes she wouldn’t sir him every other word. He’s sure it will wear off as she gets used to how things work around here. Wedge is proud to say he has the least formal crew in the entire fleet. New Republic high command would say that’s a bad thing, one of many subjects Wedge and them don’t see eye to eye on.

Mostly he stays out of their way, and they stay out of his, and things work out alright. Most of the time. He thinks they forget about him out here sometimes, which he appreciates. Sometimes they’ll want to give him diplomatic assignments, or attend a commemorative service, or consider retirement, and he has to come up for a reason to ignore them without being rude enough to make more trouble. He’s gotten better at it over the years.

He only half listens as Caj rattles off his schedule. It’s the same as yesterday, same as tomorrow. He has morning briefing with his command crew. He’ll go sit up on the bridge for a while. That will get boring and he’ll come up with an errand for Caj while he escapes to the hangar bay and get in his pilots way until Caj finds him. Lunch. Sit around the bridge a while longer. Take a visual inspection of his ship, aka take a walk. Evening briefing, where he hands the bridge over to Kath. There’s time between shift end and bed, but those aren’t scheduled. He will be left to his own devices, without Caj to hurry him along. Those empty hours are still a long way off.

They head into the conference room, and he takes the seat at the head of the table. Caj pours him a cup of caf, but leaves him to doctor it with too much sugar. She doesn’t drink the stuff herself. She sits at his left, with perfect posture, ready to take notes that no one will ever refer back to.

They’re the first people in the conference room. They’re always the first people in the conference room, even when Wedge does something to make them late. Wedge doesn’t know if Caj has them running early, or if the rest of his command crew are chronically late. Stars, it could be both.

Trost and Lorn arrive together, arguing loudly. Wedge ignores them, and they ignore him. Any other captain would have gotten rid of them a long time ago, but they’re good at their jobs, and Wedge has a soft spot for fuckups. 

Lorn’s thirty-something, human, and always tired looking. He isn’t as good of a pilot as Wedge was, but he’s good. He keeps the squadron together, and is a good training officer. There isn’t a lot of need for X-Wings on humanitarian missions, which means they get a lot of green kids and old hands looking for a quiet last posting before retirement. 

Trost is a good quartermaster. He’s a better slicer, which helps. Not that there are any irregularities with their supplies. Not according to the records anyway. He’s a Bothan, and he strokes his ginger whiskers whenever he has to lie, which hasn’t been a problem yet, but could be someday.

Ahma comes in. She hits both boys on the back of the head, then take the seat next to Caj. Ahma’s a Sullstan, and she’s been a mechanic on the _Faith_ since the ship left the dockyards, the chief for the past ten years. Wedge might retire if she does. He’d consider it at least. Not that he’s worried, she’s as hitched to this ship as he is. She draws into Caj into conversation about the hyperdrive upgrade requisition process, which is very important, and should have happened ages ago, but fell by the wayside. That kind of bureaucracy makes Wedge’s eyes glaze over, and it’s not like high command is eager to throw money at them.

Kath is the last to arrive, dark hair falling out of her bun. She ignores them all until she’s fixed her tea just the way she likes it, then takes her seat. She takes a sip of tea and smiles sleepily from across the table. 

“Colonel Metru, how did the ship’s night go?” Wedge asks.

Everyone else gets quiet, waiting for her answer.

Kath smiles, and plays up her faded Chandrilian drawl to say, “Well, General, to be honest, I’m amazed we made it. There was one moment where the boredom got so heavy, I thought it might kill us all.”

Everyone laughs. 

“Honestly, Wedge, it was fine. Kully still has a cold, so I ordered them to bed instead of trying to stay awake through this meeting. I’m almost caught up on our datawork, which is amazing, because it’s not like you do any.”

Everyone except Caj laughs at his expense.

Kath is a good executive officer — calm, more interested in protocol than he is, but not bothered when he ignores it. She’s been serving onboard the Faith for five years now, three as XO, and he trusts her. She’s too good to stay in this position forever, but he’s lucky to have her around until she gets sick of him.

She’s the one to get the meeting back on track, probably because she wants to get through with it and go to bed. They go around the table and everyone reports in. The engines are fine, semi-decrepit hyperdrive aside. The X-Wing squadron’s main issue is pilot boredom, but Lorn has some new ideas for drills to distract them, which he’d love to run by Wedge later. There is a decent chance that conversation will be the highlight of Wedge’s week. 

Trost has a lot to say about their supplies, and fuel usage, and something else that isn’t actually important. Wedge lets him talk, because he knows Trost enjoys having a captive audience, and believes in humoring his subordinates from time to time. He mostly doesn’t listen, and knows that everyone basically isn’t listening, except for Caj, who’s listening and taking notes, which will be useful if it turns out that Wedge missed something he should have paid attention to. Unlikely, but theoretically possible. 

Caj nudges his shoulder, which means there’s probably something he’s supposed to be reacting to. Trost is staring at him expectantly.

“Repeat that last bit again?” Wedge asks. Across the table Kath is doing a poor job of hiding her smirk with her tea. Wedge takes another gulp of caf and remembers that he’s the boss of all of them. 

“It seems that we missed the emergency rations we ordered,” Trost says. “They were delivered to Yrf, and we won’t be back there for another six cycles.”

“Oh no,” Wedge says. “Well, we all know what a lawless place that is. I bet they’ll be gone by the time we get back. What a shame.” He _knows_ they’ll be gone, safely in the hands of the Resistance, as planned.

“Yeah, it’s terrible. I guess I’ll place another order?” Trost asks.

“Yeah, you better. Some medpacks too, I think. I’m sure you can set up another drop off somewhere along our route?”

“I’ll get right to that,” Trost says. Wedge trusts him to chose somewhere they will have just left by the time the supplies show up, with lax security to make sure whoever Tycho sends doesn’t have a real rough time picking them up.

“Anything else?” Wedge asks the table at large. “Lieutenant Vercet, is they’re anything I’m forgetting to tell them?”

“No, sir,” Caj says, after checking her notes.

“Alright then. Meeting adjourned. I’ll see you all back here at the end of the day. Try not to blow up my ship in the meantime.”

That gets a chorus of laughter, and Lorn’s offended objection, “That was _one time_ , and it wasn’t my fault, my ion cannons were malfunctioning.”

From there, Wedge goes to the bridge, Caj a step and a half behind him. Everyone halfheartedly comes to attention when he walks in, for a half second before he can say at ease. He sits in the captain’s chair. They do work. He gets updated on their current bearing, progress to their destination, so on and so forth. Everything is doing what it’s supposed to. Great.

Their general mission is to provide humanitarian aid and foster goodwill to the outer rim. When there isn’t a crisis to rush to, like right now, that means lending a hand with infrastructure and encouraging democracy. They’re supposed to have a diplomatic attache onboard, but no one’s lasted for more than six months since Gartleby retired. This time it’s taken so long to fill the position that Wedge thinks command may have just given up. It leaves Wedge with more hands to shake, but he doesn’t have to share his ship with a diplomat, which is an alright trade off. 

Right now they’re en route from Yrf to Jae-Tep which should be about two more ship’s-days in hyperspace. They’ll deliver some supplies, meet some people, visit a hospital or a school or something. Wedge doesn’t try to keep it all straight ahead of time, that’s what he has Caj for.

It gets to be midmorning, and he starts getting bored, and starts thinking up an errand for Caj on. He sends her to Ahma to talk about the hyperdrive, even though they were just talking about the hyperdrive, and there’s surely nothing more to say. Still, she goes. The privileges of rank.

He wastes five more minutes pretending to do important things before leaving the bridge. He goes down to the hangar where they keep the X-Wings. He sits in Lorn’s office and talks about training drills, which is interesting, and important, and makes Wedge wonder why he came back to the navy and accepted all the promotions instead of staying with Norra at the flight school. Then they go sit in the pilot’s lounge and get tempted into telling stories about the bad old days.

Caj finds him there, with his feet up on the table, in the middle of retelling the story about the time he got to pretend to be a pirate for the ten thousandth time. She leans against the wall, a shadow on the edge of the room, until he’s reached the conclusion. He might even see the hint of a smile, but it’s hard to be sure from this distance.

“Looks like I’m being called away to do some real work,” he says, standing up. 

He follows Caj out of the room and back towards the bridge.

“Did I miss anything?” Wedge asks.

“No, sir. Ahma and I talked about the hyperdrive updates.” She spends the next twenty minutes telling him all about the hyperdrive updates, in incredibly boring detail, which he deserves. She only stops when it’s time for lunch.

When he doesn’t have meetings, Wedge eats in the mess like everyone else. He wants to be accessible. Caj sits next to him. He’s said she should go sit with her own friends, but she only does that when he’s being particularly frustrating. She said she’s learning about his leadership style, which doesn’t make much sense to Wedge, but if she wants to, then alright . He didn’t know he had a leadership style. He never really thought about it, other than not wanting to be like any of the people who got in his way when he wasn’t in charge.

Maybe his leadership is just sitting around and talking to people. At least it is these days. That isn’t what got him to where he is. It’s a good leadership style for peacetime, and he got here by doing everything he could to help win the war, stopping just short of dying.

Wedge’s leadership style is not dying. That’s a cheery thought. Wedge eats the gloopy reconstituted ruggartubers and tries not to think of all the friends he’s lost over the years. 

After lunch, they head up to the bridge, and hear about everything that’s happened since they left. Very little has happened. Caj takes notes. Wedge tries to pay attention. He reads reports from other elements of the fleet for forty minutes before the restlessness gets to be too much.

“Lieutenant, would you like to join me on a visual inspection of the ship?” he asks.

“Yes, sir,” Caj says.

Caj has some system for where they take their walks. She’s chosen corridors carefully, so if anyone checked it would look like they’re taking a deliberate survey of the ship. They’re going to start repeating themselves eventually, but Wedge hasn’t noticed it yet. Maybe Caj will have them walking down hallways in the opposite direction, for variety’s sake. They mostly don’t talk, only occasionally making observations about something they see, or someone who passes them. 

They walk until it’s time for the evening shift change briefing. Caj gets them to the conference room before anyone else, as usual. There’s no caf for him to fiddle with as he waits for everyone else to cycle in. They go around the table, but there’s not much new to report. Wedge hands command of the ship over to Kath until the next ship’s morning. He has hours off duty, and very little to fill them with.

Wedge has never been much good at downtime. It was easier when he was younger, when his pilots were closer to his peers. He used to fly with friends he could drink with after a long day, but he’s accepted too many promotions, now he’s just the old man in charge. He never was much fun anyway.

He takes his dinner back to his quarters. He tries to read. He used to wish he had more time to read. He used to wish he was someone who read books. Luke used to bring home old Jedi histories, and Wedge would sit next to him in bed with some novel, trying to pay attention to the words on the page instead of the heat radiating from Luke’s body. He’d either wind up asleep on Luke’s shoulder, or they’d give into distraction. That was better.

He sits in the soft armchair in his quarters — one of the few privileges of rank he appreciates — and tries to read. 

He’s half way through the memoir of a separatist soldier from Fest who lived through the whole civil war, and isn’t convinced the Empire was much worse than the Old Republic, or that the New Republic is much better than the Empire. Wedge disagrees. He believes in what he’s spent his life fighting for. But as an old solider himself, there are parts of the story he relates to as well.

He gets through a chapter before putting it down. It’s good, just — hard to read. He plays a round of solitaire. Then he heads down to the gym. At the end of the day, he runs.

At his last physical the doc told him he should stop running, take up swimming, or do something gentler on his joints, but they don’t keep pools on warships, and he hates the stationary bikes, and he’s never been good at considering his health anyway. He’s already had one knee replaced a few years back, the other’s hanging on alright for now.

So he runs, on the narrow track that circles around the gym and the medcenter. This time of ship’s night everyone should be working or sleeping, it’s as close to deserted as it ever gets. He uses headphones and the fact that he’s the general to keep anyone from talking to him. 

Running is one of the only things he picked up at the Imperial academy that stuck with him. It’s the simplest thing left to lose himself in. There used to be flying, there used to be battle, there used to be _sex._ He used to feel more satisfied with his life at the end of the day, with no need to run until his his mind is empty enough to let sleep come in.

He doesn’t miss the bad old days. He doesn’t miss the war. He doesn’t miss the bone deep exhaustion, being pushed to the edge of collapse because what they were doing was more important than their health or well being.

He might miss not being alone in bed at the end of the night. He might miss feeling useful. Not enough that he isn’t grateful for the fragile peace they’ve found, not enough that he isn’t proud of it.

He’s just old now. He has more scars, aches in more places, has more things he doesn’t want to remember. He’s lived a surprisingly long life, and it weighs heavily on him in the dark when he should be fast asleep. 

He runs until he can’t. He showers. He climbs into bed. Tries to sleep. Can’t. Doesn’t give up — he’s bad at giving up, even when maybe that’s the smart move. He lies on the narrow bunk, soft, the privilege of rank, but narrow, because he knows it isn’t going to be anyone other than just him. He’s used to narrow bunks, finds them comforting even. Still can’t sleep. Keeps his eyes closed. Ship’s morning will come no matter what, all he can do is keep his eyes closed, try to keep his mind blank, try to grab onto all the rest he can.

He keeps his eyes closed. Blackness. Nothingness. The sound of his own breathing, the sound of the ship around him, the distant thrum of the engine as they slip through space. Eventually he does manage to drift off.

Too few hours later, someone’s pounding on his door. They must have tried the buzzer first, but he can sleep through that, half deaf from years of standing too close to explosions and spacecraft taking off. He glances at the clock on his nightstand and swears. If Kath sent someone to wake him at this hour it must be important — it better be.

There’s an ensign standing in the hallway, pale as a sheet, hopefully afraid of the trouble that comes from waking a general, not anything bigger. Wedge tries not to glower. The kid’s just doing their job. 

“Report?”

“Sir, Colonel Meteru wants to see you right away on the bridge.”

“About?”

“Sir, there’s something about the Hosnian system, and no one is sure if it’s our sensors, but they reset the sensors, and tried to call in to high command for conformation, and it just…” The kid trails off.

Wedge used to be better with names, and he used to have less people under his command, and he feels bad that he has no memory of interacting with this kid before, this kid who seems shaken, needing leadership, not just an asshole who’s gotten three hours of sleep.

“Ensign, as plain as you can say it, what does Meteru want me to know about?”

“It’s gone, sir.”

Wedge rubs at the sleep in his eyes, and tries to hold back a yawn. “What is?”

“The Hosnian system.”

So, that gets him dressed and headed to the bridge in a blink, hurrying along with what he hopes is a dignified sprint, ignoring the way his knee twinges. The bridge isn’t the chaos he expected. Kath has everyone calm, working hard to figure out what happened. That stillness is just as eerie.

They’re checking their mapping tools, checking their telescopes, trading messages with other Republic vessels in the Outer Rim who are seeing the same thing. Someone has to know what’s going on. It can’t be as obvious and tragic as it appears on first glance. Wedge can’t believe it.

He doesn’t notice when Caj shows up — he didn’t send anyone to wake her, but all of the sudden she’s there, standing next to him, answering his question about their com array. He would have let her sleep; she would have hated that. Not that she would have said anything. But he would have let her sleep.

Instead she’s standing next to him, taking notes as he and Kath come up with increasingly unlikely reasons why what they think they’re seeing is wrong. If, somehow, the entire Hosnian system has disappeared because of a galaxy wide droid insurrection beginning by taking the Republic capital hostage, there’s proof that he thought of it. So if that’s what happened, he’s got bragging rights.

There really isn’t a lot to do besides speculate. Speculate, and worry, and hope that somehow this will all get answered by something that isn’t horrible. 

Eventually, he gives the order to stop trying to place a call to Hosnia. Whatever is or isn’t happening in the system, they’re out of the Faith’s reach. 

There’s no going back to sleep now. Caj brings him caf. It’s so sweet it makes his teeth ache, so sweet he almost feels ill, but he thanks her and drinks it anyway. 

There isn’t actually a lot for them to do, but Wedge can’t bring himself to give the order to stand down. There’s no need for all hands on deck battle readiness, but it’s comforting, in an odd way. There’s nothing for them to do from here, and he isn’t ready to take off at top speed towards the core. They’re stuck waiting — for more news, for new orders, though Wedge doesn’t know where they’d come from.

If Hosnia is gone, he doesn’t know who’s in charge of the fleet. He’s fairly sure it isn’t him, but would admit there’s a chance he’s wrong. While the New Republic’s heart is in Hosnia, the military apparatus is spread throughout the galaxy. Leadership is spread out, because someone was smart enough to imagine that a disaster like this. Wedge is sure there’s someone out there for him to report to.

“Try calling Coruscant,” Wedge says. Whoever’s in charge in Coruscant must be in charge of the whole damn fleet now. Wedge doesn’t know who that is, some admiral who’s never had time for him. A career administrator, he’d guess, someone who didn’t see action, who wasn’t there before bipartisan senate committees turned the old rebel alliance forces into the toothless police they are now. Wedge doesn’t want to call Coruscant, doesn’t want to take orders from someone he doesn’t respect.

“Or actually — try to get ahold of General Cracken in military intelligence.” Last he heard Pash was based out of Coruscant, but that was a while ago. Pash flew with the Rogues for a while, and his old man was always reasonable. Wedge wouldn’t hate talking to Pash. Wedge would probably be alright with any order Pash passed along.

Putting the call through takes longer than it should, but that’s expected on a day like this. Caj is bickering with someone on the other side of the line. She’ll sort it out.

She’s frowning when she comes to him a minute later. “General Cracken will only talk if you take the call in the captain’s holo chamber, not the bridge. I know you don’t like that, but his aide was very insistent, and I tried but—”

“That’s fine,” Wedge says. Most of the time, in Wedge’s years of experience, if someone wants to the captain alone, it’s because they want to feel superior to the crew, but Pash isn’t that kind of asshole. 

Caj nods, and goes to set it up. He trails after her, wondering what it is that Pash is about to tell him that he doesn’t want the whole bridge to overhear. He can’t imagine it’s anything good. The knot in his stomach that’s been present since he woke up tightens.

The room goes dark when the call goes through, the only light coming from the control panel, and Pash’s figure flickering in blue light. Caj is standing behind the switchboard, out of sight, while Wedge stands in the circle where his own figure can be captured for projection. He tries not to fidget too much, knowing how his old ship struggles to process sudden movements. He’s sure the receiver in Coruscant is much better.

He can tell it’s true, even before Pash says anything. The Hosnian system is gone. It isn’t an error in their system, it isn’t shielded, it’s gone. Death toll in the billions. Somehow things keep on getting bigger, unimaginably so. Scarif, then Alderaan, now the entire Hosnian system. All gone. 

Pash doesn’t know a lot, not for sure, not officially. “And I’m not supposed to be sharing what I do know, but I’ll make an exception because we’re old friends.”

The bits and pieces are frightening enough. The First Order built something called “Starkiller.” They don’t know if it can fire again. They don’t know how to stop it. They don’t know what else it might be capable of.

“It seems like you don’t know a lot,” Wedge says.

“Yeah, well, half our intelligence operations are gone now, so. We’re getting some of this second hand from the Resistance, so I’m sure you could find out for yourself if you felt like it.”

Wedge doesn’t respond to that.

Pash sighs. “I can add you to the list of people who want to know what’s next, but it’s going to be a while before anything is decided. We have to know more, and figure out chain of command with so much of the admiralty gone. You really might be better off asking a few questions yourself.”

Wedge doesn’t know how to say this, knows he probably shouldn’t say this, but he trusts Pash fair enough, and he can’t not say it. “Maybe, but if I start calling up old friends I don’t think I’d be satisfied with just asking a few questions, not if one of them isn’t how I could help out.”

“Not a whole lot stopping you,” Pash says, casually, like mutiny isn’t a big deal.

Wedge snorts.

“Really. The senate is gone, the admiralty is in disarray. Even once we figure out who’s in charge, there will be bigger priorities than chasing after an old Starhawk that’s gone rogue.”

Wedge shrugs.

“Something to think about anyway,” Pash says.

“Plenty to think about.”

“We figure any more out, I’ll pass it along, if you’ll do the same.”

“I’m not sure why you think I might learn anything, but sure. Good to know we aren’t getting forgotten about out here.”

“Not unless you want to be,” Pash says.

Wedge ends the call. It’s very dark for a moment before Caj flips the lights back on

He should have sent her out of the room. She’s staring at him, looking stricken. Probably because the Hosnian system is gone, but Pash’s casual incitement to commit treason certainly didn’t help. He isn’t worried about her discretion, but she didn’t need to hear that, not when he isn’t sure if it’s going to turn into anything.

There’s no changing it now. The only way is forward. “Well lieutenant, I guess it’s up to us to share the news.”

“Yes, sir.”

He watches as she squares her shoulders, falling back to proper military posture like it’s a shield. He copies her action, and as unnatural as it feels to him, it helps. At least he knows he’ll look the part of a General who can be strong in the face of this disaster.

He goes back to the bridge. Everyone’s looking at him for confirmation, hoping for a natural disaster instead of mass murder. He doesn’t know what to say. He’s still reckoning with the scale of the destruction. He takes a deep breath, and addresses his crew.

“The Hosnian System is gone. We believe it’s the First Order. When I know more, you’ll know more. Until then, we’ll carry on as best we can.”

That feels inadequate, but he’s never been good at speeches, and there’s no prettying this up. The Hosnian System is gone. They’ll carry on as best they can. He doesn’t know what else to say. He doesn’t know what else to do.

It takes a minute, but they stop staring at him, and go back to their business.

Kath is sitting in the captain’s chair, staring at nothing. He puts his hand over hers on the arm rest. “You should sleep for a while.”

She doesn’t say anything right away, like she has to gather the strength to answer. 

“Someone has to be conscious to make decisions later on, and better you than me,” he says.

She exhales. “Yeah alright. It’s all just…”

Really fucking big. He knows. He nods, and gives her a hand up. They really should get back to the ship’s shift schedule, it isn’t just that he wants his chair back. He would hug her, but they’re on the bridge, and have to seem like commanding officers who aren’t about to fall apart, not regular beings with feelings. 

Wedge sits in the captain’s chair. Caj works at her station. He asks for a full system status update, to keep everyone busy, to be sure they’re ready, in case anything comes up. How could anyone be ready for something like Starkiller?

He’s in charge, so he has to pretend.

He wonders how anyone else did this. It was a long time ago, but he still remembers the day on Yavin, when they heard about the destruction of Alderaan. Red Squadron was between missions, restless and worried, hanging around the pilot’s lounge, talking too loudly, like that would make up for all the people who didn’t come back from Scarif. There wasn’t an announcement, just someone wandering in, sharing the news in a wavering voice.

They spent the rest of the afternoon standing in the back of the command center, listening to the news come in. He remembers Hobbie ducked out around supper time, and brought back a roll from the mess, which Wedge ate without tasting it. They would have stayed there all night, but around midnight Dondonna kicked everyone out who didn’t need to be there, saying they’d need rested pilots to get back at the empire for this.

Wedge remembers trying to fall asleep, trying to imagine how his little X-Wing could do anything to stop something that could destroy a whole planet. Plenty, it turned out, but they didn’t know that then.

He had the top bunk, and he couldn’t stay still, and it made the whole thing shake, until Biggs got fed up and told him to come down and share with him. He eventually caught a few hours of sleep, with Bigg’s arm heavy over his middle. A few days later, Biggs was dead. Wedge kept the bottom bunk. Luke could have gotten a real room, hero of Yavin and all that, but he came back to the Red Squadron barracks, where he could have picked any one of the empty beds, but he chose the one above’s Wedge’s, but hardly ever slept there, preferring to stay close to Wedge’s body heat.

He was just a kid then. He wasn’t responsible for anything. He doesn’t remember what Dondonna and Mothma did to keep the base calm. Ackbar was up on Home One. He would have been on the bridge, sitting in his chair out over the viewport, and must have said something much more useful to his crew than anything Wedge has been able to come up with. There probably would have been an ocean metaphor somewhere in it. The water is deep, the currents strong, and sometimes one must allow oneself to be carried along without losing track of oneself. Wedge doesn’t know. 

His leadership style doesn’t include ocean imagery or reassuring speeches — it involves his people not dying. So far, so good. It’s easy to keep your people safe when you aren’t allowed in the fight. But it isn’t always easy to stay out when there’s something worth fighting for.

Hours later Kath comes back to the bridge, with clean hair and dark shadows under her eyes. She says if he doesn’t try to get some sleep she’ll stage a mutiny. It might be nice to have someone else in charge, but they don’t really need more chaos, so he’d better go lie down for a while.

The bare walls of his quarters look worse than they did the day before. The life he’s carved out for himself doesn’t seem to amount to much. He’s so tired his eyes hurt, but he’s worried about what dreams might come.

He sits in his desk chair, and calls up his personal correspondence. There’s a glut of messages, people announcing they’re alright, wondering if he’s alive to answer back. He scrolls through the names, trying not to think about who’s missing. He doesn’t have the energy to answer anyone, to respond to any sorrow that isn’t his own.

The inspirational thought of the day waiting in Wedge’s inbox for the day the Hosnian system was destroyed is, “The cost of war can never truly be accounted for.”

He sends three messages. One to Mirax, letting her know he’s alright, promising to call her when things calm down, asking her not to worry, knowing she won’t listen. One reply to the old Rogue Squadron list — he’s fine, hopes everyone else is too. And then one to Tycho, bounced to be untraceable, though he isn’t sure if that matters anymore. It’s a short message, only a few lines, but he labors over the composition, wanting to make sure it’s clear to Tycho what he’s suggesting, while obscure to anyone else. Possibly, it isn’t so much the wording he’s agonizing about, but the idea inside. He needs to stop procrastinating, hit send, and try to sleep. 

He wavers over how to end it — he doesn’t want to get sappy. But at the same time, he wants Tycho to know how much he cares. The screen blurs in front of him, his tired brain rereading, trying to check that he hasn’t dropped a word somewhere.

_Hey — I’m alright. Hope you and yours are as well. I’ve been thinking — maybe we stop making plans for a picnic, and I come over for dinner, maybe bring the whole crew? It seems like perfect weather might not be coming any day soon, and I’d like to do something while I can. We should set up a time to talk. May the force be with you._

That will have to be good enough.

There’s nothing else he can do tonight. Much to his surprise, he’s asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He dreams about Luke, which doesn’t happen often. There were a lot of good things about his time with Luke, including the best sleep of his adult life. At first he thought there was some force thing that kept the nightmares and worries away when Luke was lying next to him, but he asked one time, overtired and not able to hold back his curiosity. Luke said he didn’t think that was how the force worked, but that’s when they were still so young, and most of what Luke knew about the force came from interpreting ancient books in forgotten languages. Maybe the nightmares didn’t really go away, but he didn’t remember them so strongly, waking up with Luke beside him. Whatever it was, the force or something simpler, it was good.

It never lasted long enough for him to get used to it. It’s so far in the past, he doesn’t usually think about it enough to miss it anymore. He has no idea where Luke is now, has no idea whether Luke gets the news. But he knows, that wherever Luke is in the galaxy, he would have felt it. Maybe this is something Luke can’t hide from or ignore.

Probably not though.

Luke can be very good at hiding and ignoring things, when he wants to. Wedge was never any good at understanding what Luke wants. Which is partly his own fault, he was never any good at asking. Maybe if he had asked more, Luke would have answered, and Wedge would have understood more, and there would have been less hiding and ignoring, and the galaxy would be a very different place. But he didn’t, and it is how it is, and that’s how it goes.

It’s a galaxy where Wedge dreams of Luke, a galaxy where being with Luke feels more like a dream than something that really happened, a galaxy where Wedge can’t even dream of getting that back again. He wakes up tired, and forces himself through a run, making up for the one he missed the day before. Which is a masochistic impulse, but he does feel better by the time he’s through, grounded in his body, aching but alert. He showers, and settles in to read his messages.

The day after the Hosnia system is destroyed the thought of the day is, “The future has many paths — choose wisely.” Wedge takes deep even breaths, staring at the wall, thinking about those words.

He only opened his messages to see if there was anything from Tycho, but this was at the top of his inbox, and he thought maybe, somehow, impossibly, it might offer some guidance. Obviously he was wrong.

He ignores the reply from Mirax, doesn’t touch any of the messages from former Rogues, Wraiths, or Phantoms. None of their friendly concern is going to shape the fate of the Republic fleet. Tycho’s might.

It only a couple of lines.

_We’re holding on alright for now. You’re right about the weather. We should talk._

There’s the information for a private holocall channel attached, and an encryption protocol. He downloads it on his datapad and brings it with him.

Caj is waiting for him in the hallway. 

“Good morning lieutenant.”

“Good morning sir.”

They can pretend things are normal.

“What do we have today?” Wedge asks.

“Oh, um, sir,” Caj says. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard her mumble before. He might enjoy it, but not under these circumstances. “We were scheduled to begin some of the long-haul maintenance, and then the botany club was going to make a presentation asking for more space, but I postponed both indefinitely? Is that alright, sir?”

“Great work, lieutenant. Is the morning meeting still scheduled, or are we running wild?”

“I wouldn’t touch the morning meeting, sir,” Caj says. She sounds offended at the very idea. 

“Excellent. We have something important to talk about.”

They go through the motions of a normal briefing, or at least try. Kath and Kully are drinking tea, everyone else is drinking caf. Trost doesn’t know about the status of any of their supplies. Ahma doesn’t know if the hyperdrive updates are still happening. Kath is half asleep. Kully sounds like they’re about to cough up a long. As expected, a lot of things are still up in the air, but things are running as smoothly as could be hoped for.

They get through the rundown, and then it’s his turn, to say whatever it is he’s going to say, which is usually just telling Kath to go sleep and telling everyone else to go work. Today, he’s going to ask them for permission to turn their whole world upside down.

“Yesterday was hard,” Wedge says, which is true, but not nearly enough. “I think we handled it as well as we possibly could, and I’m real proud of how all you helped keep things calm and get us through it. There might be some more hard days coming up, but I feel alright knowing I’ll have you lot around to help me handle it.”

That gets some faint smiles. He really is so proud of them. He really does trust them, and knows they trust him, which makes this next part harder. He wouldn’t want to do anything to abuse that trust.

He takes a deep breath.

“So — chain of command is pretty fractured right now. It’ll be awhile before they figure out who’s responsible for giving us new orders. I suppose we could keep on with the old plan, but I don’t know about that.” It would be odd to build diplomatic goodwill for a government that might not exist anymore. “If I were to come up with a different agenda, would that be alright?”

He looks around the table, trying to guess what they’ll say. He respects these people, his crew. He trusts them. He hopes they trust him. If he doesn’t have support he’ll stay on course, follow orders, probably do nothing useful. If they give him the go — well, he’ll call Tycho, and work from there.

Ahma is the first to speak, to say, “That sounds exciting.” 

There’s a glint in her eyes, like she’s ready for whatever fight he leads them to. He knew she’d agree to this. He would never have considered going rogue if he didn’t know she’d be around to keep them flying.

Trost and Lorn both seem on board, but they’re talking over each other, so it’s hard to tell. Kully sneezes, but is nodding. Lorn is saying something about how good it would be to get in a real fight. Trost is saying something about their torpedo reserves. They’re so young.

Kath hasn’t said anything yet, holding back her opinion until the more junior members of the senior staff have spoken, not wanting to sway their thoughts.

Caj is quiet, sitting next to him.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“Sir?”

“What do you think, lieutenant?” 

She’s taller than him, even sitting like this, and is staring down at him with wide blue eyes.

“I’m not a senior officer, it shouldn’t matter what I think.”

“Answer me anyway.”

She considers it for a long moment. “I think that there are ways we could be of more use that require deviating from our current directive. I trust your judgement in choosing a new course. I believe that your seniority with the fleet and your war record would make a compelling case if the remaining admiralty does pursue disciplinary action.”

Wedge tries not to smile. “Well, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I’m happy to hear you think I’ll get away with it.”

“You wouldn’t get away with it sir — they’d probably strip your commission, but your seniority and war record, and the chaos of the situation, could be the basis for a good defense that the rest of us were trying to act responsibly when agreeing to your actions instead of attempting a mutiny.”

Wedge laughs. It feels good to laugh. “Nice to know you’ve got it all worked out.”

It’s funny, but she’s right about it. If they do this, he’ll be in trouble, and odds are, his XO will be too.

“Kath, what’s your take?” he asks.

She’s careful when she speaks. “I think it may be right for the _Faith_ to take on a new mission. At the same time, I know that not everyone on board may be able to come along for that.”

Lorn scoffs. “We all signed up to serve, whatever that meant. I think the general knows more about service than some Coruscant bureaucrat. If he thinks there’s another path, then I’d say it’s our duty to see it through.”

“Not everyone has the fleet as their only master,” Kath says. “Some people have other responsibilities — families, beliefs. Even if they might want to aid in the Resistance, becoming a persona non grata to the Republic might not be an option.”

Wedge nods. That wasn’t anything he’d considered — the fleet has been his whole life for a long time. He forgets that most people have something else outside of the service. 

“Noted — Trost, can you run an estimate of how many crew we can afford to let go without losing functions?”

They’re already running light, because their humanitarian mission to the outer rim was never a priority for the Republic, but ships like this were designed with redundancies in place in case of crew loss. 

Trost nods, and jots it down.

It’s too soon to start making plans; Wedge still has no idea where they’ll be going, if they’re going anywhere, but they should be able to figure out a way to drop off some of their people in Republic space, make sure they get home to their families. It’s easy to shrug off his duty to follow the Navy’s orders, but not his duty to his people.

He dismisses them for now. Kath can go sleep, everyone else can get to work, and he has to call an old friend.

Caj trails after him up to the captain’s holo call chamber, and he doesn’t notice her more than he notices his own shadow. It was bad enough that she was here when he talked to Pash yesterday, there’s no way she should be in the room when he talks to Tycho. Beyond the obvious security concerns, there’s no guarantee he won’t embarrass himself when he gets to talk to his best friend for the first time in far too long.

“Lieutenant, you can wait outside.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Caj asks.

“I still know how to place a call myself.”

She looks at him skeptically, which is fair. The computers changed the way to replay archived holo messages a month ago, and she had to explain it to him three times before he got it. But that’s just because he was so used to doing it the old way. He’s fine as long as they don’t change things up on him unnecessarily.

“You can wait right outside the door, and if I have any trouble with anything, I’ll shout, alright? I mean, they did make me a general for a reason, I’m smart enough to place my own calls.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, bows her head, and is out the door.

He feels bad bringing rank into it, but he knew that would work. She’s still green enough for that to mean something. She was trained by a peacetime military, respect for rank drilled into her. In a peacetime military, rank is an honor, something that’s earned through bravery and service. In Wedge’s day, rank came from staying alive, or being important enough that someone else important wanted you to feel good about yourself. He wonders if the New Republic fleet will stick around long enough to learn the old way, or will it fall apart standing neatly at attention.

He connects his datapad to the holoprojector, and routes the call along the encryption Tycho sent. In the big picture of things that have happened in the past day and a half, the moments he has to wait for the connection to resolve is barely a headache. It seems to take forever. Wedge has been running through the different ways this conversation could go nonstop since last night, he’s impatient to see what actually happens. 

Projected in blue light, Tycho looks the same as always, the color hiding the white in his hair, the distance obscuring any wrinkles.

The last time Wedge got to sit and talk with his best friend was a couple of days before the New Republic stopped considering the Resistance Senator Organa’s pet project, and designated it a dangerous splinter group. They knew it was coming. Honestly, if it was anyone other than Leia at the head, the Resistance would have been considered a threat a lot earlier. He went over for dinner, and they never brought up saying goodbye, but it felt like the end of something. Wedge almost left the fleet then, but was convinced to stick around and do what he could from the inside. That was three years ago.

He’s spent the last three years running bullshit goodwill missions in the outer rim. Tycho’s spent the last three years being one of the leading military voices in the Resistance. They’ve traded messages back and forth frequently, but never said much. Communiques about supplies are nothing like sitting with your best friend and having long rambling conversations because it’s better to keep talking than try to sleep and face whatever it was they’d lost on the last mission. 

He wants to ask: how are you? How’s Winter? How are the kids? How’s Leia? How are you holding up? I’m sorry? I know we don’t talk about Alderaan, but I know this must hurt? I know I don’t know anything about Alderaan, but you know I care, right?

But this isn’t a personal call. They won’t be able to talk long, and there are more urgent considerations. 

Wedge doesn’t know where to start.

“How’s the fleet?” Tycho asks.

“An absolute mess. How’s the Resistance?”

“Cautiously alright? For today at least. We took out their weapon, but we still need to move, and I haven’t heard about our casualties yet.”

“If you made it so they can’t fire that thing again, I’d count it as a win.”

“Until tomorrow anyway,” Tycho says.

“There’s always something else tomorrow.”

They’ve both been doing this for too long.

“What do you think the Resistance’s next move is?” Wedge asks.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to pretend I know what Leia’s thinking. They’ll be in disorder too after losing Starkiller, and it might be a good time to hit back, but I don’t know if we have the people to try that.”

“What if you had another capital ship?” Wedge asks. “Would that help?”

“What are you thinking about doing?” Tycho asks.

“I’m thinking about giving myself new orders.” That’s what it feels like. He’s deserted once before, because he didn’t believe in the Empire. This is different. Bringing his ship to help the Resistance would be doing what he should have been doing all along, if the New Republic had been able to get its head out of its ass and admit the First Order needed to get put down. 

Tycho sighs.

Tycho didn’t desert until after the Empire destroyed Alderaan. He was talking to his family on a holocall when it happened. He assumed it cut out because of a technical error, because that made sense, unlike the military force he was a part of destroying his home planet. Tycho’s loyal, and he believes in changing an organization from within, and it took losing his whole world in the middle of a conversation for him to switch sides.

“The fleet is going to be behind the Resistance now — it has to be. I could just skip the waiting period where they debate who has the authority to make that decision.”

“You know that chain of command exists for a reason, and there are good reasons why you aren’t allowed to just take your ship and join in a war without anyone’s permission.”

“Yeah, sure,” Wedge says. Sure he knows that. He just thinks it’s stupid. “It’s a fine set of reasons, most of the time, but this situation here, it’s pretty exceptional, right?”

“You aren’t supposed to be the one who gets to decide that.”

Wedge scoffs. Like that isn’t his whole life story. Like Tycho hasn’t followed him into battle after decision like that dozens of time. Like there’s another option.

“Tell me not to. Tell me that my ship, and my people wouldn’t help, and I’ll keep us out of it until that changes.”

“You’d be a huge help, and I’d love to have you here, it’s just—” 

“No, I think it’s that simple.”

“I can’t ask—”

“You aren’t asking.”

“You have a life with the New Republic, a career, and I can’t ask you to—”

“Not much of a life, and _fuck_ my career, and you aren’t asking. I’m volunteering.”

Tycho shakes his head. “You always did pick the worst assignments.”

“And you were always right behind me.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Yeah, alright.” Wedge is really doing this.

“It’ll be good to see you,” Tycho says.

“I have to talk to my people, get some things organized, but then we’ll head your way.”

“I’m not sure what that way will be yet — our current base is compromised, and there’s still an argument about where to hide out next.”

“No ice planets,” Wedge says, even though he didn’t hate Hoth. But he was young then, and in the first heat of love.

Tycho laughs. “I’ll pass along your vote to Leia.”

There’s nothing else they need to say, and this is the wrong venue for small talk. As much as Wedge may want to stay on the call with his friend, they both have work to do.

“I’ll call back tomorrow?” Wedge asks.

“Sounds good. I’ll be here.”

The call ends.

Caj is waiting for him just outside the door. She’s looking at him expectantly, but doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t volunteer any answers. She can find out along with everyone else.

They go through an odd pretense of a usual day. Trost sends him the details of how many people they can afford to leave. It’s a narrower margin that Wedge would like. He’ll only feel alright with this plan if his people don’t feel like they’re required to stay. 

It’s especially tight in engineering, where they can only spare a couple of bodies and still be capable of conducting repairs in the middle of a battle. They’ll be able to take on more crew from the Resistance, but adding mechanics might be tricky. The Faith is an older ship, and she has her quirks. He sends Ahma a message, asking what she thinks her people will do.

They have as exactly as many pilots as they have x-wings, so if any of them want out, they’re down a fighter unless he wants to get in the cockpit himself. As tempting as that might sound, it can’t happen. They’ll be alright. As long as they don’t get in any dog fights until they meet up with Leia’s people. If the Resistance is anything like the Rebellion they’ll have more pilots than planes. 

He drafts what he’s going to say to the crew, asking them to go along with his defection. He likes to think he’s earned their trust, their loyalty, but he’s never tested it before. He’s never been in battle with these people, only done his best to steer them through a simmering stalemate disguised as peace.

By the end of the work day he thinks he knows what comes next, or at least an actionable outline to share with his team at their evening briefing. 

He wants them to go around first, sharing like they usually do, but they won’t have that, won’t wait, eager to hear how his call went. He calls them impatient children, because teasing is how he knows to show he cares, and he cares about them so much.

They’re all quiet before he starts talking, which is very unusual. He supposes it’s supposed to be a good thing, but it just feels odds.

“So, I talked to an old friend who’s with the Resistance, and they’d be happy to have us. We’ll loop back to Yrf and pick up the emergency rations waiting for us, and let off whatever crew wants out, and then meet up with the Resistance fleet.”

“They have a fleet?” Trost interrupts him to ask. “You can call that few ships a fleet?”

Wedge shrugs. “Sure I can — it’s aspirational. We’ll make it into a fleet. We’ll rendezvous with the Resistance fleet, take on more of their people as crew and, I hope, with pretty quick turnaround, we’ll be taking the fight to the First Order.”

He looks around the table at all their faces — they look excited. They look young. They’ve never been to war before. Wedge tried so hard not to go back; he hedged, and made excuses, and did what he could without leaving his boring little life. But now here he is, rushing back into the fray.

They talk about telling the crew — Wedge will make a statement, department heads will talk to their people. There are lists to make. Trost is going to see if he can reroute more supplies to their pick-up in a hurry. They’re going to be leaving the safety net of the Republic behind, they need to be as prepared as possible. Wedge wants to oversee every detail, but he knows he needs to trust his people. 

Falling asleep after that is hard. He thought having a plan would make him feel better. Maybe it will once they’re on their way, but standing on the precipice is only making his worries worse. He’s too old for another war. That’s what he’s been saying all along, when the First Order started saber rattling, when the Resistance split off. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in the cause, but he was too old to sign up for another war.

Not old enough to retire though — no, never. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he left the navy. He tried once, to settle down with a nice girl, have a nice life, and it lasted less than a year before the work came calling. If he left the navy he would sit down somewhere, and never get up again, quickly disintegrating into dust. 

He can hardly believe they’re doing this. There were long stretches, including the best years of his life, where he couldn’t believe it was really happening. Couldn’t believe he was still alive, couldn’t believe it looked like they might win, couldn’t believe it when they won, couldn’t believe who he was sharing a bed with more nights than not. But that’s all in the past, and his life has made sense for a while now. Too much sense. It’s been too boring, too safe, and he should have gone over to the Resistance before now. Better late than never.

He tosses and turns all night. He hasn’t felt this excited about anything in ages, and he feels guilty about that. He doesn’t check his personal messages, he just rolls out of bed, and gets dressed for the morning meeting. He opens his door twenty minutes earlier than usual. 

Caj is sitting on the hallway floor, drinking a can of spark-up, outlining her eyes with a blue pencil. She’s so young. She starts to stand, ready to snap for attention, and he waves her off. 

“Lieutenant, we can stop pretending I give a kriff about protocol before my caf.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, but he’s fairly sure the “sir” is sarcastic, and lets him give her a hand up after she’s finished with her drawing. 

The meeting itself goes well. Less people want to leave than Wedge expected. They’re only losing one pilot, barely anyone from medical or engineering. They’ll be able to keep flying, and they’ll be able to fight. He hopes they can avoid getting in a battle until they’ve met up with the Resistance, but they’ll be ready if it comes down to it. Wedge has gone soft, has let his whole ship slip out of battle preparedness. They’ll have to get back to that now.

Kath wants to talk to him after the meeting. Alone. Which doesn’t come as a surprise, but doesn’t make him happy. 

They sit in his office, her with a cup of tea, him with a cup of caf.

“Sir,” she starts, which is never a good sign.

“Kath—”

She doesn’t let him interrupt her.

“Sir, I think you’re doing the right thing, but I can’t go with you.”

He sighs. “I figured.”

He opens the bottom drawer of his desk, takes out the bottle of Whyren’s, pours some into her tea, a bit more into his caf.

“I really do think you’re doing the right thing by going to the Resistance,” she says, trying to be reassuring, but he doesn’t need it, he understands.

“It’s just that you have a career, and a family, and responsibilities to them,” Wedge says. She has two kids living with her ex on Chandrila. “I respect that.”

“And if you’re defecting, the Resistance is still going to need someone on the inside arguing their case. And I’ll be proud to do that for you, sir.”

“Kath, please stop with the sir-ing.”

“Wedge, I’m trying to have a moment where I tell you how much I respect your leadership and have learned a lot from serving with you. Let me have my kriffing moment.”

“Fine, Colonel. Have your moment.”

“I said everything I had to say. You ruined it,” Kath says, but she’s smiling.

“I’m going to miss you a lot,” he says.

Wedge has gotten used to losing people he cares about suddenly, often violently, often forever. That’s messed him up in a lot of ways that mostly don’t matter, but it does mean he’s bad at this. He doesn’t like saying goodbye to a friend — though it is better than them dying. He still doesn’t like it, and he still isn’t good at it.

“I’ll miss you too. I wouldn’t be able to leave if I didn’t know that you’ll do everything you can to keep our people safe,” Kath says.

“You know, I wasn’t going to trust you,” Wedge says. If Kath is going, they might as well talk about the unacknowledged truth their relationship was built on. “I knew they put you on my ship as an attempt to rein me in. You’re disciplined, and do things by the book, which I never have. They trusted that your loyalty was to the Republic. They thought you’d talk me out of things like this.”

Kath laughs, a little bit watery. “They got that wrong, eh?”

He laughs too. “I guess I earned your trust. And you earned mine too. Because I knew all that when you came onboard, and I wasn’t going to let them manipulate me like that. But then you were here, and you’re smart, and work hard, and it’s good when I listen to you. Sometimes I might need to be reined in, sometimes it might be better to do things by the book.”

“Only sometimes,” Kath says.

“Yeah, and you’re good at making me slow down and think about whether it’s one of those times, when otherwise I might just barrel along with my own plan.” He likes to think he’s gotten better at that with age, or maybe it’s that he hasn’t been in many battles lately. That’s going to change soon, although with the Resistance he’ll be reporting to someone he trusts absolutely.

“You’ll do alright without me,” Kath says.

Wedge is sure he’ll manage, but he’d rather have her along for the adventure. There’s no use in saying that though, it would just make her feel guilty. He can just finish his caf, and she can finish her tea, and then they can get back to the business of running the ship together until it’s time for her to leave. 

There’s nothing to do until they reach Yrf. Less than usual even. They’re just pretending to be a well behaved part of the Republic fleet for now, not doing anything useful. Until their defection is official, it’s bad opsec for the Resistance to share any plans with them. Wedge is bored. He reads reports and initials things.

He and Caj go on a lot of walks. He talks to his crew. A lot of people tell him he’s doing the right thing, that they’re excited to join the Resistance. The people who aren’t coming along come up to him too. He listens, and nods like he understands. He doesn’t like how they come to him, looking for absolution, for his blessing to leave. His opinion shouldn’t matter so much. More than thirty years in command, and he still isn’t entirely comfortable with the weight of his people’s esteem.

He talked to Ackbar about this once, decades ago, before the old fish had badgered him into accepting another promotion. Whatever Ackbar said was helpful — it made him feel like less of a stuffed shirt. He just wishes he could remember what it was. Something about how there’s no holding back the tides, how there’s other fish in the sea. Nonsense, probably, but it gave him some comfort. 

They arrive at the port in Yrf early in Wedge’s shift on the bridge. He stands there with his hands folded behind his back, waiting for something to go wrong that he’ll have to step in and fix, but it never comes. They resupply their fuel reserves, they take the emergency rations onboard, as well as all the X-Wing parts the facility had available. Wedge doesn’t know what Trost had to say to get the governor to agree to that, is probably happier not knowing, and is most certainly going to ask at their next meeting, because it’s his business to know these things. He could send Caj down to ask right now, but if he doesn’t know until after they leave, then he can’t give the X-Wing parts back, and they’re going to need those.

The members of the crew who aren’t coming along start boarding shuttles for the planet. Wedge doesn’t need to see them off, but does anyway. Mostly he just stands there, a figure of authority overseeing the operation, but a few people have something to say. Mostly, it’s _I wish I could come along, but_ , followed by some story about a child, or an elderly parent, or in one medic’s case, a herd of bisonorios that they’ve inherited. Wedge nods, because he understands in theory if not in practice. If they want his blessing, he’ll give it, even though what he thinks shouldn’t matter.

If there are any dissenters, anyone who thinks he’s doing the wrong thing, they don’t say anything. There was someone who was coming up to him who looked like she might be trouble, but Caj’s glare must have scared her off. It’s just as well — he doesn’t have the patience to be scolded by someone under his command, not today.

The only person he wants to talk to is Kath, but it’s good for everyone to see him. He doesn’t like being a figurehead, doesn’t like being an authority figure, but if standing there can be reassuring, he can do it.

He knew letting Kath go would be hard, but it’s worse than he imagined. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything.

“I’ll look after everyone,” she says.

“I know.” She’ll do a great job. She’ll be a good captain. She’s the kind of officer the Republic is going to need as they rebuild the fleet, as steady as they come.

He would hug her, but that would be unprofessional. He is willing to at least pretend to care about propriety according to the Republic fleet, for at least a little while longer. That’s the kind of thing Kath cares about.

Instead they share a final handshake.

“It’s been a pleasure serving with you,” he says.

“You as well,” she says. And then she surprises him, and pulls him closer, into a strong embrace. He goes with it, pats her on the back, ignores the misty look in her eyes when she pulls away. 

She boards the shuttle. It’s already gone, out of sight, by the time Wedge and Caj are back on the bridge. He paces back and forth in front of the viewport, making care not to get in his crew’s way. The shuttle returns from the planet, having traded its passengers for more supplies. Twenty minutes later they get the all-okay, everyone who needed to leave is gone, everyone who’s staying is prepared for the journey ahead. Wedge gives the order to depart, and the _Faith_ leaves Republic service, on to other adventures.

Wedge is on the bridge when the signal comes through. It’s an encrypted message broadcasting widely, the paradox of something secret trying to reach as many people as possible. That’s the kind of thing that stands out, and when Wedge takes a look at it, he recognizes the protocol as one Leia used all through the last war. He types in the corresponding key, and it opens. He’s pleased for a moment, until he reads what it says. 

It’s an urgent plea for help, any help, all the help possible. Sent from Crait, a planet Wedge remembers, with some fondness, as a staging area for dull missions, and the tiny warm room underground he shared with Luke. With their near-antiquated hyperdrive, if they turned around and headed that way, they’d reach Crait in three and a half days. It’s the opposite direction from their current bearing, and not connected by a well traveled hyperspace route. By the time they got there, the battle would be over, and they would most likely be met by First Order ships waiting around to pick off anyone who came to the Resistance’s aid. Going to Crait wouldn’t save anyone, it would just be leading his own people into a slaughter. Wedge knows better than that. 

He wants to turn this ship around, make for Crait as fast as can be, do anything he can. But he has a crew he’s responsible for, and that’s a terrible idea. Whatever happens on Crait is going to happen, and Wedge and his people need to be ready for what’s next. 

Protocol would be to maintain their current heading until someone tells them otherwise. But Wedge hasn’t given a shit about protocol in a long time, and Tycho knows that about him. So Wedge decides to be nice, and send along a message that he is indeed going to follow protocol and maintain his current heading until someone tells him otherwise, with a strong subtext that he’d appreciate if someone told him otherwise. He’d like to have something to do, instead of just meandering towards a new base. But he’s still new to the Resistance, and doesn’t want to get in anyone’s way, so he’s going to be patient. 

Tycho does not respond immediately, which makes sense, considering how he’s most likely trying to coordinate a rescue op. And there’s no one Wedge would trust more to save the day than Tycho, but he’d still rather do something himself instead of sitting here, staring at a dot marked Crait on his screen.

He really doesn’t spend that long waiting before Tycho pings him back. Which he would like to think is because he’s important, and not because Tycho doesn’t trust him not to make for Crait. He’s probably wrong, because Tycho’s message is just, “Stay on course, will update when resolved.” 

Wedge understands he is being asked to do nothing. He will attempt to do nothing. 

There’s been too much waiting.

He waits all through his shift on the bridge, until the ship night comes, and Kully and Trost come to relieve him. He’ll have to figure out a real second officer at some point, but until then they’ll make do. He eats dinner in the mess, because it seems important for people to see him, even if he’s tired, and would rather go straight to hiding in his room.

He opens his personal messages, closes them without reading anything. He knows better than to try to concentrate on his book. If they turned around right now, they could reach Crait in just under four days.

Wedge isn’t a man of faith. He believes in the Force because he’s seen it, seen the way Luke wields it, felt the way it touches him. He knows that the Force exists, an inexplicable power, radiant and vast. But just because it’s real that doesn’t make it a religion, just because he knows it’s real doesn’t make him religious. The Force exists, but it doesn’t listen to him.

Sometimes, on days like this, he wishes his everyday-belief was something more superstitious, because he imagines it would feel nice to pray. It would feel nice to ask, and believe his wishes are being heard. It would be nice to believe that the universe understands what he wants from it.

Instead he sits cross legged on his bed, ignoring the way his knee aches, ignoring how his hip twinges, ignoring the truth that he should be asleep right now. He sits cross legged on the bed and takes deep breaths, inhale, exhale, as his heartbeat slows, as he tries to let go of the tension he’s carrying in his neck, his jaw, his shoulders. He breathes, and tries to think of nothing.

He doesn’t believe in the Force as a higher power, but he was taught the rituals of belief by someone who did — does — it’s hard to say; every relationship Luke’s ever had has struggled with tenses. 

There might be a moment, where he thinks he feels something, an inner warmth, a presence, the memory of what Luke’s skin felt like against his, vivid in a way he had lost. But it’s gone just as quickly as it came. It was probably nothing at all, just sleep deprivation and age and sentimentality making him imagine things.

Wedge spends the whole next morning wondering what Tycho meant by “resolved.” And then, as the day wears on, and they still haven’t heard back from the Resistance, the whole afternoon as well. He moves on to halfhearted wondering with dinner to distract him, and then a brief respite as he throws his body through an obliterating workout. He catches his breath, cleans up, wishing for a real water shower, heat beating itself against his muscles drop by drop. Instead he just aches, and goes back to his room, wonder solidifying into worry. 

He tries to think of nothing. He fails. He tries to sleep. It’s difficult, but he manages a few hours. He checks his personal messages. Nothing from Tycho, although there could be an official com waiting for him. The thought of the day is: “Ignore your instincts at your own peril.” Useless.

They could be a third of the way to Crait by now. Halfway, if he ignored all Ahma’s warnings and pushed the engines. 

Tycho’s call comes through in the middle of lunch, which gives Wedge an excuse to stop picking at his food. He busses his tray, and heads to the captain’s com room, Caj on his heel.

“You stay here,” he says, when he gets to the door. She frowns, but nods, and stays in the hallway. He settles into the chair, and opens the connection.

He can’t even wait for Tycho to tell him anything, he has to jump right into his questions. 

“Who did you send to Crait?”

“The closet ship was two days away. I had them rushing in that direction anyway, not that it matters now,” Tycho sighs, sounding absolutely exhausted. 

That sounds bad. Wedge wishes Tycho was sitting next to him, instead of on another ship, lightyears away.

“I… I guess I can be honest with you,” Tycho says. “I’ve spent all day calling people up, and giving politician answers to potential allies, because we want to seem strong right now. But I don’t have to do that with you.”

“I’d be worried if you did,” Wedge says.

“We still don’t know what happened on Crait,” Tycho says. “At least somebody got out, we’re getting Leia’s com signature from what looks like the Falcon, but that doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. It can’t just be the Falcon, they’d need a bigger ship, or another ship, unless…” Unless there aren’t more survivors than can fit in that junk-bucket. Which would mean hundreds have died. Which is nothing compared to the Hosnian system, but a loss they can’t afford. “It’s Leia’s signature, and it sure looks like the Falcon on long range scans, but it isn’t responding to hails, so we really don’t know what’s going on until someone flies out and talks to them, assuming this isn’t all some sort of trap.”

Wedge wasn’t expecting good news, but this is worse than he imagined.

He doesn’t know what to say.

Maybe he can try to be reassuring, say the sort of thing Tycho would say to him if he was in charge of worrying about all of this. “It’s probably just the Falcon being an old piece of crap. The coms were always a mess, I don’t see how twenty years sitting in that fucking desert would make them any better.”

“You’re probably right,” Tycho says, because it would be nice if Wedge was right, and hey, he could be. He is sometimes. He might know what he’s talking about.

“You want me to go check it out?” Wedge asks.

“We have other people who are closer,” Tycho says.

“Other people with this many guns on their ship?” Wedge asks. _Other people that you can trust as much as you trust me,_ the other, unsaid, part of the offer.

“I actually have another errand for you, if that’s alright,” Tycho says.

“Wherever you need me,” Wedge says. As long as Tycho doesn’t need him to wait around and do nothing, but it sounds like they’re passed that, thank force.

“It’s not exciting, but it’s important, and I know you’ll get it done.”

“Anything,” Wedge says, and that’s how he winds up with a fucking diplomatic mission to Marchelko. He tries, gently, to remind Tycho about his track record when it comes to diplomatic missions, which just makes Tycho sigh, and rub the bridge of his nose.

“They’ll like that you have a big ship and a long military track record. And I can’t spare anyone else right now.”

It’s dire, if Wedge is the best choice for a diplomatic mission. Or maybe not, not anymore. He hates it, but he has experience, he knows what he’s supposed to do, even if the execution doesn’t come naturally.

Tycho starts to explain the details of the mission, and Wedge calls Caj back into the room, because she’ll make better notes, and think of questions he won’t. This is a learning opportunity, her first taste of what it’s like to be a rag-tag military in the middle of a war. Tycho signs off, bigger things to worry about than their attempts at diplomacy. Wedge and Caj refine the plan, to a point where they’re ready to present it to the senior staff at their end of the day meeting.

There’s something thrilling about this — talking about plans that matter. Not that his job has all been bullshit in peacetime — they’ve done disaster relief, and occasionally interfered in planetary disputes. But it’s been a long time since he gave a briefing on a wartime operation. He looks at all their faces — eager, and except for Ahma, so incredibly young.

“So, we have a new mission from the Resistance,” Wedge says.

“Are we allowed to take missions from the Resistance?” Trost asks.

Wedge shrugs.

Caj answers for him. “Absolutely not, but we’ve already _stopped_ following orders from the Republic, so at this point, if we’re just doing what Wedge says, unless we think he’s delusional, and then we’d have to…” She trails off, as she seems to realize what she’s saying. “Oh. Um. Which I’m sure will never happen.”

“Shhh, Caj, that’s supposed to be the meeting after this,” Lorn says.

Wedge laughs. “I’m happy to hear someone’s ready to prepare a second mutiny if I let the power go to my head. You can keep your plotting for later though.”

He starts relaying the plan he’s talked over with Tycho to his crew. They’re going to Marchelko, where a Resistance-sympathetic Countess has been gathering materiel and emergency supplies. They fly in, Wedge is charming, they load up the supplies, and then rendezvous with the fleet. Assuming the offer is being made in good faith, and not someone trying to lure Resistance leadership into a trap. Also, assuming that the Marchelkonian planetary defense even lets them approach the planet, instead of shooting them on sight. There is a _slim_ chance that they get shot-at on sight, but they have shields that should be able to handle that possibility.

But theoretically, it’s a simple in-and-out, and then they’ll go to wherever the Resistance base has been re-established. Assuming it does get re-established by then. Which is not something his crew needs to worry about, just like they don’t need to know that Resistance high command is off the grid. Right now, the only thing to worry about is the simple mission in front of them, not the rest of the war.

The weak point of the plan is that it involves Wedge meeting with the Countess in person. Partly because it relies on him playing the charming diplomat, poster boy for a cause he only officially joined the day before, but also because it puts him in her hands, and anything could happen. Also, if Wedge is going to leave the ship, and he has to, he has to figure out who’s in charge while he’s gone, and who’s in charge in case he doesn’t come back, which doesn’t have an easy answer since Kath left.

He never would have thought to wonder about that if Caj hadn’t brought it to his attention.

“You think I’m going to die down there?” he asks, mostly joking.

“No, sir. I certainly hope not, considering I’ll probably be standing close enough to get caught up in any explosion or assassination attempt. But it’s protocol. I know we’re not with the Republic anymore, but somethings are protocol for a reason, and this is one of the rules we should continue to follow because they make sense.”

She has a point there. “I don’t suppose you want to be in charge then?” he asks.

“No, sir. I’m just a lieutenant, and if I don’t go down to the planet with you there’s a higher chance you’ll die down there.”

He knew she’d get comfortable to start making jokes eventually. Even if the jokes are all about him dying, he’ll take it.

“Who do you think should be in charge?” Wedge asks.

“You should pick one of the bridge officers from the reverse-shift, and give them Colonel Metru’s responsibilities for the time being.”

She’s right of course, and he’s been meaning to do that, but has been putting it off. If he didn’t replace Kath, then it would be like she wasn’t gone. Not that it ever works. There’s good officers on the reverse-shift, who he can trust. Good people rise in situations like this. He probably never would have accepted a promotion to squadron leader if Luke hadn’t fucked off when he did.

He’ll be giving a bright young person an opportunity to make a difference. That’s his job now. To give bright young people opportunities to fight and die, while he sits around and gives orders and makes choices about acceptable risk levels.

He asks Caj to make a list of all the important procedural things that he’s been ignoring, the things that he wouldn’t touch unless Kath nagged him, if she didn’t just handle it herself. It’s a long list. He reads it over, and sighs. “Prioritize what’s most important, then make a schedule so we should done with this before we reach the Resistance.”

“Yes, sir,” Caj says, visibly excited to have a new organizational project in front of her.

At least someone’s excited. They’re going to get their house in order before they rendezvous with the Resistance, even if Wedge regrets ever accepting administrorial responsibilities. They work. It isn’t interesting, but it’s better than nothing. Wedge wants to be useful, and this doesn’t make him feel much better, but it’s something.

The next day Caj sends him a list of officers for him to talk to, one of which he should be able to pick as the interim XO. They’re all well qualified, strong service records, well disciplined. They all seem so kriffing young. 

In theory, a capital ship should rotate officers through its different shifts so they all build working relationships and are prepared for combat situations. In reality, the Admiralty stuck Wedge with officers they don’t know what to do with, and he stuck the ones he found unpleasant with Kath. She either trained them into competency, or frustrated them into asking for reassignment. It was a terrible habit to fall into, and he isn’t proud of it, but it had worked alright for them, until now, where he isn’t as nearly familiar with the reverse shift bridge crew as he should be.  
Three of them are so boring that he disregards them immediately. He doesn’t know how Kath put up with having these stuffed uniforms standing around on her bridge. Another one just feels slimy — Wedge can’t say exactly what it is, but he’s been doing this long enough, he knows when to trust his instincts.

That leaves him with Captain Una Tong, and Commander Evans Petry. Tong got her start as a pilot, which makes Wedge predisposed to like her, and therefore more caution because he knows he’s biased. Tong’s former officers describe her as “too smart for her own good,” and “a mouthy fleecesteed,” which would raise red flags to a lot of people, but just makes Wedge intrigued. Tong has potential. She could be a great officer.

Petry, a communications officer, is calm and easygoing. Variations of the phrase “levelheaded under pressure” comes up half a dozen times in his service record. They need levelheaded under pressure right now. They need levelheaded more than they need smart, or daring, or exceptional potential. He needs someone reliable, who hopefully he’ll grow to trust, someday down the line.

Not anytime soon though. 

This is giving him a headache. “Are you sure I can’t just put you in charge?” he asks Caj.

“No, sir. I don’t have seniority, and who would look after you if I was in charge of the reverse-shift?”

“I could look after myself.”

Caj makes a tutting noise, like she sincerely doubts that. He isn’t even going to try to argue.

He thinks about it, and thinks about it, and re-reads both of their files. He gets Caj to ask Kully what they think, because some people behave differently around Generals than they do around lieutenants. Kully’s been on the reverse-shift for a year and a half, and has gotten to see both Tong and Petry in action, and Kath always trusted their judgement. He does everything he can to gather information and make an informed decision. He still isn’t sure what to do. 

Sharing command is always a headache, but usually more so for the people stuck sharing it, not the person they’re reporting to, so maybe he should make the two of them work together. He didn’t mind sharing command when the other person wasn’t an idiot. But then, he never wanted command in the first place. He doesn’t know if these young people and their egos can handle it. Truth be told, the _Faith’s_ next permanent XO will probably come from the new Resistance personelle. So they might as well experiment with a joint command for now.

He talks to both of them in the conference room at the end of his day, and the start of theirs, and outlines his idea. He doesn’t think they like each other very much, but they seem open to the possibility. Apparently, most people find it hard to say no to a promotion, even if it doesn’t come with a raise, or a higher rank. Wedge has given up on understanding the psychology involved. Tong and Petry are no exception. They agree to work together, accepting his plan completely. He’s the general, he’s in charge, and therefore he must know what he’s doing. The amount of trust that comes with command is immense, and must never be taken for granted. Tong and Petry will learn that, hopefully. 

He isn’t won’t leave them in charge of his ship when he’s off planet — they’re practically children, and he isn’t a fool. Ahma will hold command, even though there isn’t much precedent for elevating a senior engineer to acting-captain. But he thinks he’ll be able to sleep as well as ever with the two of them making decisions over the reverse-shift.

Not that he’s sleeping much. Tossing and turning, and staring at the celling, trying to get a handle on the current war and his place in it. It feels good to finally be doing something, to be on the side he believes in. But when he closes his eyes, he can’t stop wondering what would have happened if he’d joined up with the Resistance earlier. It’s impossible to say his presence would have made any real difference, ridiculous to think that he could have saved the Hosnian system, or stopped whatever happened on Crait. He’s one man, insignificant in a vast galaxy.

Luke, though… 

Sometimes he wonders if the world would be different if he had held on tighter. If he had refused to be left behind, if he had stopped Luke from running away. He knows, really, there’s nothing he could have done, that Luke’s life choices are not his responsibility, and that Luke’s presence in the fight might not have changed anything. But it’s harder to accept that, not when it felt like the last war turned suddenly once they had a Jedi on their side.

He’ll feel better once the action starts. He can’t wait to meet up with the Resistance, to see Tycho and Leia, and know what all pieces in play are. He used to see the war from the cockpit, not thinking past the current dogfight, not worrying about much more than his squadron. Now he’s gotten used to thinking big picture, and right now, he knows he can’t see nearly enough.

He’ll join up with the Resistance, and things will start to make more sense. He’ll be with his people, who he trusts absolutely, people he’s trusted with his life for forty years. They just have to get through this one little rinky-dink mission first.

The mission to Marchelko is a mess from the start. There’s a planetary shield, which is the kind of thing that happens when you’re an isolationist planet with a wealthy monarchy. There’s no way to pop down and visit the Countess undetected, which was always a long shot. 

The planetary defense wants to know what a Republic Starhawk is doing, making an unscheduled visit to lesser nobility. Wedge doesn’t want the Viser asking anyone from the Republic what their ship is doing here; they’re supposed to be two quadrants away. He tries to explain that it’s a diplomatic mission, need to know only. He’s spent enough time around spies, he knows the kind of thing they say to discourage follow-up questions. He tries to make it sound salacious, but boring — the Republic trying to cover up dirty laundry that has nothing to do with Marchelkonian planetary security.

He does a bad job, maybe, probably, or maybe the Viser was never going to accept his bullshit answer. The Viser wants to talk to him, personally. He’s free to take a shuttle down to see the Countess, his people will be free to come and go as they please. As long as they dance like a trained huplotang first. 

“It’s only proper that General Antilles stops at the Parliamentary Palace and allows the Viser to receive him in the appropriate manner,” the intermediary on the holocall says, in an affected upper-level Coruscanti accent, the familiar sound of an Outer Rim Oligarchy with pretensions of grandeur. 

Wedge wants to tell the lackey to tell his boss to fuck off, but Tycho asked for diplomacy, so he’ll try. He goes for a stoic military bearing, knowing his best fake smile is an abomination. Sure, he’ll go down and greet the Viser in person, if that’s what’s right and proper. Just him and an aide, not a full escort? Of course, if that’s what’s right and proper. It smells like a trap, but what else is he going to do?

The Resistance needs every scrap of help there is to be found, so Wedge will go down there, dance like a diplomat, even if odds are it’s a trap.

Caj listened to the whole call, and knows just as much as he does about what they’re likely to be walking into. This isn’t what she signed up for.

“You don’t have to come with if you don’t want to,” he says, quietly, on their way down to the hangar bay.

She rolls her eyes, not wasting the breath to tell him how foolish a thing that was to say.

The two of them get on a shuttle, and head towards the planet, leaving Ahma in charge. This is the kind of plan Kath would have talked out of. She was fundamentally opposed to any mission that put him in a ship without a co-pilot, something about safety concerns and not wanting to be left in charge in the wake of his death. But she isn’t here right now, and Wedge doesn’t see another way.

A lot of things suck about this plan, but Wedge does like that it gave him a chance to fly. Just puttering around in one of their clunky passenger shuttles feels like the most natural thing in the world, easier than anything else that’s asked of him. 

They get held out of the shields for a long time, which shouldn’t happen. It was all discussed, but now the on duty officer has to call and get clearance codes, and they have to wait.

They’re vulnerable, sitting here, a lightly shielded shuttle pulled close to a planetary defense array. If someone on that platform decided to fire, they’d be toast, unless Wedge pulled off a truly spectacular last-second dodge. Wedge holds onto the controls loosely, ready for action, while Caj’s knuckles are white gripping the armrests. 

This must be the closest to real danger Caj has gotten since she joined the fleet. He’s unsurprise by how capably she’s handling it. 

After an anxious fifteen minutes of waiting, the call from above comes in, and they’re allowed through the shields.

“Alright, we’ve locked on a tractor beam to bring you to the Parliamentary Palace,” the guard says.

“That won’t be necessary,” Wedge says. “I can land myself.” None of their discussions have included anything about a tractor beam.

“All traffic to the Parliamentary Palace is controlled by tractor beam,” the guard says, before hanging up on them. The ship jolts around them as the tractor beam starts pulling them towards the planet. Wedge watches on the display as the shield opens briefly, and then closes behind them. 

“Is this normal?” she asks. “For them to bring us in, all the way from a shield station to the planet? Because based on everything I’ve read, it doesn’t seem normal.”

“It isn’t common, but it isn’t unheard of either.” It’s very rare, and only really helpful on heavily built up, heavily trafficked planet like Coruscant. The only reason why Marchelko would want to bring them in like this are paranoid reasons, but Caj sounds worried enough without him making it worse. 

For the moment, there is nothing to do. They’re powerless. Trying to break free of the tractor beam would probably tear the ship apart, and even if they were free, there would still be the shield to contend with. 

They just have to wait. 

He hates it.

Caj looks like she’s ready to start clawing the upholstery of the armrests, or maybe he’s projecting his own anxiety. He needs a distraction, something other than clinging to the steering wheel when none of his moves will change anything. There’s something about leadership that he should be able to teach Caj in this moment, something about living through danger and uncertainty. But that isn’t anything you can teach, it’s something you start to understand by doing it, and the best way to do it he’s found involves not overthinking it. 

His best coping methods have always relied on distraction. He could ask about her family, who she never talks about. He knows she has a sister, who’s allergic to shellfish, but nothing else. He could ask about the planet she grew up on, which he’s never been to. He could ask about her time at the academy — which professors she had, whether they still serve soggy chips in the mess. But the academy is gone, along with the entire Hosnian system, and Wedge doesn’t want to think about that.

So he asks, “How did you end up joining the navy?”

“I don’t know,” Caj asks.

“Sure you do.” He doesn’t believe for a second that she didn’t join up with a carefully considered five year plan.

“I don’t know,” she says again, exasperated, probably because he’s making small talk, and they could die any minute. “I wanted to see more of the galaxy than the planet I grew up on and maybe a vacation on the moon. Stars, that sounds like a horrible reason. Selfish, small.”

“No, it makes sense,” he says. “It’s a good reason.” That’s not how he found his way to the Navy, but it could have been. He’s heard that a hundred times from people he’s served with, mostly people from planets no one's ever heard of. 

“It isn’t just that—” she takes a deep breath, to steady herself, because she thinks her answer is important, and cares what he thinks, which she shouldn’t. Wedge doesn’t care about her answer — he’s interested, but it doesn’t matter why she joined up, what matters is that she’s a good officer now. 

She rubs a hand through her barely-there hair, a nervous fidget, uncommon for her. “I wanted to be part of something larger than myself,” she says, “And I wanted to be of service. But that’s harder to explain, so most of the time I don’t try.”

“I understand,” Wedge says, and he does; both parts of it — wanting to help, not knowing how to explain.

“I thought you would,” Caj says, which he’s taking as a compliment. “How did _you_ wind up in the navy? The Rebellion I understand, but you went to the Imperial Academy first, and you really don’t strike me as the type, sir.”

“It’s kind of a long story,” Wedge says. It’s never been something he’s been proud of, never something he’s liked talking about.

“We don’t have anything else to do, sir,” Caj points out. At the agonizingly slow rate the tractor beam is bringing them in, it will be at least half an hour until they reach the planet.

“True.” He might as well tell her. Maybe it will be a learning experience. Maybe if she hears all this she’ll understand that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing more than anyone else, he’s just muddling along.

“So, My parents died when I was sixteen.” He might as well start there.

“I’m sorry,” Caj says.

Wedge waves off her sympathy. “That was a long time ago.” He doesn’t think of them often anymore; he doesn’t remember them as clearly as he used to. The holo he’s carried with has preserved their faces, but he’s lost the sound of his mother’s laugh, the smell of his father’s baking. “They ran a fuel station, and there was a robbery that went wrong. They died for hardly enough credits to get a ticket out off-world. I, in all my wisdom, decided to go after their killer.” Wedge laughs at himself, far removed from teenage heroics, old enough to realize what an idiot he was, still enough of an idiot not to regret it. “I had an old headhunter, and I was alone in the world, and didn’t trust CorSec to do anything. So I decided to chase after the dangerous murderers. I don’t know how I found them — I was sixteen, I didn’t know anything. They weren’t the sharpest vibroblades in the box. I thought I wanted revenge, but couldn’t bring myself to go through with it. I shot their engines out and handed them over to the authorities.”

There was a trial, but Wedge left before anything was decided. You’d think they’d be thankful for the help, and to have the bad guys in custody, but they weren’t too happy with him for doing their job. And there was something about him being underage and not having the proper licenses for the headhunter. He didn’t want to stick around and see what they’d do with him.

“I didn’t know what to do after that — I had been so single minded about catching my parents’ killers, I didn’t think about what came next. I wound up flying a freighter for Booster Terrik — I guess you’re too young to remember the name, but he was a real crook, and a great man.” Wedge misses Booster — the way he used to show up out of nowhere, the weight that throwing his name around used to have. “He looked after me, tried to anyway. But then CorSec and the Imps hauled him in, and everyone on his payroll too.”

“You were a criminal,” Caj says, sounding scandalized. 

Wedge shrugs. “Not really. They couldn’t charge me with anything, but that didn’t matter much, I was still in trouble. I got a choice — time on Kessel or Imperial service. Equal odds I’d die either way, but I’m Corellian, the odds have never meant much to me, so I picked the one where it seemed like my death might at least be interesting. I took the placement test, it said I should be a pilot. I learned everything I could. I defected. Now here were are.”

“I think you skipped a few things, sir,” Caj says.

“Nothing too important.”

“Just flying on both Death Star runs, the liberation of Kashyyyk, the liberation of Thyferra, and the battle of Jakku.”

“I was just flying. I’m good at that.”

“I thought I wanted to be a pilot when I was little,” Caj says.

“Yeah?” Wedge wouldn’t’ve pegged her for the type — too much sense.

“Yeah. I wanted to be a hero. But then I got to the Academy, and my first time in a sim I got so nauseous. Terrible vertigo, I was sick on myself. The second time I fainted. So I transferred into a different track, and it all worked out fine.”

“You aren’t bitter?” Wedge asks.

“About what?” Caj asks. “About not making it as something I thought I wanted to be as a child? I didn’t know anything about what it meant to be a pilot. And yeah, this isn’t as flashy, but what I do is just as important — more important. All the X-wing hotshots wouldn’t be able to do anything without people like me around to keep things running.”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

“What’s this ‘we,’ sir?” Caj asks. “You’re one of us now.”

Force, she’s right. He’s become an administrator. A fate he never imagined; most of the fates he _did_ imagine included dying in a fiery crash before he turned thirty. Instead he’s gotten so terribly old, and the galaxy is just as much of a mess as before. 

Slowly, very slowly, the tractor beam brings them down to the planet. The Parliamentary Palace is a delicately frilled, overwrought, monstrosity. A gleaming protocol droid escorts them along a manicured boulevard from the hangar, up a grand marble staircase, and into a dark paneled study full of plush furniture. Wedge has seen more ostentatious displays of wealth before, but not in a long time. They’re left waiting in the study for forty-five long minutes. At least there are cookies, and little sandwiches. A more paranoid man might worry about poison, but Wedge doesn’t see why anyone would try this hard to make an impression only to kill him before he can share it with anyone.

The Viser, when he does finally come talk to them, seems mostly harmless, if slightly incompetent. Most of all, he seems very scared. Scared that there will be reprisals against his world for aiding the Resistance. Scared that the galactic conflict will exacerbate planetary disputes. Scared that the Republic can’t keep anyone safe.

The way Wedge sees it, he should be scared. No one’s safe from the First Order. The Resistance is the only hope left. But he’s (unfortunately) a seasoned diplomat, and knows he shouldn’t say that. So he says comforting nothings, makes promises that the Countess’s contributions will be kept private. As far as anyone knows, the Faith is still a Republic ship, going about Republic business. Nothing suspicious at all. Wedge doesn’t know how long that will last, but he’ll have his supplies by then, and will never have to talk to this man again, thank the stars. 

They are allowed to rebuild their shuttle, and fly themselves, no tractor beam, to the Countess’s estate on the other end of the continent. Wedge lands in an empty field near the house, and they’re halfway along a well trod path when the Countess herself comes out to greet them.

Countess Olyna Ventriklik is a tough old broad. She must be in her 90s, calls Leia “the darling princess,” and speaks fondly of the dinner parties Breha Organa used to throw. When Wedge tells her that he used to run special errands for Bail Organa back in the day, he immediately enters her good books. She insists on feeding them lunch while her people load up the shuttle. When Wedge proves to be a boring conversationalist, she turns her attention to Caj, interrogating the poor thing about her love life and professional prospects. Apparently she has a dozen grandchildren, all single, with very attractive traits. Unsurprisingly, Caj is much better at diplomacy than he is, and manages to evade every proposed match.

They linger at the table. There’s coffee, and little cakes, and Wedge just wants to go back to his ship.

“I’d be out there myself, if I could,” the Countess says.

Wedge doesn’t know what’s stopping her. He can’t shoot or fly or run as well as he used to, but he’s still trying.

Caj smiles, and says something nice.

Wedge should be more sympathetic. Stasis can be hard to snap out of. He stuck with the Republic for a long, long time after it became painfully obvious they weren’t going to do anything worthwhile.

“It’s been very kind of you both to humor an old woman, but we all know why you’re really here,” the Countess says. She pulls a credit token out of her sleeve, and places it on the table. “Ten thousand credits. Untraceable.” She beckons, and a protocol droid sets a case down next to the pewter carafe. She opens the case, and there must be a hundred identical credit chips arranged in neat rows. “There are four cases like this already on your ship. This is just for spycraft — I’ve already made a deposit into the dear princess’s account, but I’m sure it helps to have spending money on hand.”

Yeah. Spending money.

“The Resistance is incredibly grateful for your generosity,” Wedge says. He isn’t bad at this, not anymore, but he hates it. He’s more comfortable as a spy than a diplomat — something about lying to the enemy versus lying to a so-called friend. 

They finish their little cakes, and make polite conversation, and Wedge doesn’t _actually_ want anyone to start shooting at him, but at least that would be interesting.

Their shuttle is full of the promised cases of credit chips, along with various other supplies that the Countess must have thought they’d appreciate, including what looks like a crate full of champagne. Wedge would have preferred whisky, but anything beats pilot’s homebrew. Before they take off Wedge has Caj sweep for bugs and explosives, while he checks that no one has messed with the navigation controls. It’s all clean, but it never hurts to be cautious. 

They leave Marchelko and start spiraling vaguely towards the new Resistance base when Tycho calls and says he’s sending a scout ship to bring them in. It’s a smart precaution to keep the base’s location off channels that the Republic could still be listening in on. Wedge expects his first week at the base to be spent with Resistance technicians going over the _Faith’s_ comms array with a fine tooth comb. 

Wedge doesn’t have to go down and greet the Resistance scout pilot, but he does it anyway. He hadn’t thought much about who the pilot would be. Someone Tycho trusted, but could afford to lose for a few days to dull escort duty. Most of the people Wedge flew with don’t see much action anymore — this is the kind of job that gets given to old pilots who aren’t as sharp as they used to be. 

He’s a little bit surprised when the pilot isn’t of his generation. Surprised, but delighted. 

“So, you finally decided to join the cool kids,” Snap says, before he’s even out of the cockpit. 

Snap was the first one to ask him to join the Resistance, when it was less than a year old. He doesn’t know if Leia sent him, thinking he might listen to a bright eyed kid before he’d listen to her, or if Snap came of his own initiative, hoping for more leadership. Doesn’t matter. He bought Snap dinner, and said he had no intention of leaving his ship. They had that conversation three times in the last month Snap was with the fleet, but that might have had less to do with the Resistance's need for senior leadership than it did with Snap knowing Wedge would buy him dinner.

“Thought you lot looked sad enough that you needed my help.”

“We always needed your help,” Snap says, which is kind, and might even be true. But Wedge made his choice then, and he’s making another decision now. 

“You think Leia’s going to let me fly an X-wing? The Republic is all about datawork and supervision, I’m running away from all that.”

Snap laughs. “If I was in charge, I’d make you fly patrols with the rest of us, but I think General Organa has bigger plans for you.”

Wedge shakes his head. “Terrible.”

“Maybe you need to start my own splinter group, where you get to fly an X-wing, and don’t have to do any datawork. That sounds fun. I’d join that.”

“If you joined my splinter group I’d make you do all the datawork,” Wedge says. “Somebody’s gotta do it.”

Snap waits for the deck crew to bring around a ladder instead of just jumping to the floor — force knows, years of doing that would have been enough to fuck up Wedge’s knees, even without the crashes. He supposes, Snap isn’t exactly a youngster anymore. It’s been thirty years since Snap was a teenager that Wedge probably shouldn’t have put in an X-wing. Snap is taller than him now, broader than him. It’s been this way for a long time. Wedge has never gotten over it, thinks he never will, never really wants to. 

“You heard from your mother?” Wedge asks. Norra’s one of the friends he hasn’t heard from since Hosnia was destroyed, and he was worried, though if Snap’s in a good enough mood to joke around, then it was probably over nothing.

“Yeah, she got out in time,” Snap says. “She’s with us, and we don’t have the security for civilian comms, so she hasn’t been able to get into her messages. Sorry if that got you worried.”

Wedge shakes his head. “I’m sure you had bigger things to worry about.”

“Yeah, I did, but my mom told me to apologize for worrying you when I told her where I was headed.”

“She was always trying to teach you some manners,” Wedge says. “Too bad it didn’t really take.” 

“Hey — I use my manners when it matters — but you? You’re practically family,” Snap says.

“I’m sure Norra would say something about how it’s important to be polite to your family too.”

“I think she’d say anytime I scare you is fair payback for all the times you were supposed to check in with her and never did.”

Snap’s joking, but it isn’t really funny. Wedge should have been better to the people who cared about him. Maybe then things would have been different. Maybe then he wouldn’t be an old man, alone with a starship. Decisions were made, and it’s too late to change things. What matters now is what comes next, what future they build out of the rubble. 

The Resistance’s new base is on the most desolate continent of a desolate planet. It’s tundra from coast to coast, with fierce winds coming off the oceans on all sides. The Resistance is putting their base in a basin, away from the worst of the winds, which should make it easier for small aircraft to land and takeoff.

“How’s that working for you so far?” Wedge asks when he hears this.

“No one’s crashed yet,” is the best Snap has to offer. Not very reassuring, but Wedge supposes it will have to do. It could be worse; it could be Hoth all over again. Compared to Hoth, this planet seems positively welcoming.

They take a shuttle to the planet. Wedge wants to be in the pilot chair, but that isn’t his role anymore. There’s a moment where the pilot’s having a hard time with the wind, and he considers stepping in. But he gives it another minute, because he trusts his people, and they need to know that he trusts them back. 

They touch down, smooth enough. Maybe he could have done better, but that isn’t the point. They got him here. Now he has to go be a leader, and figure out what bringing his ship over to the Resistance is going to mean. Politics and strategy. Pretending to be a diplomat instead of just a soldier. He’s expecting an afternoon of meetings and headaches.

He’s greeted by something worlds better.

Tycho, standing at the edge of the tarmac.

It becomes just a little bit easier to breath. Joining the Resistance is not just adapting to a new chain of command. It’s coming home to the closest thing he has to a family. He lets go of some of the tension in his shoulders, and starts walking in that direction, Caj a step behind him.

It is good to see his friend. He wishes there was a way to convey just how good it is without sounding overly sentimental. He wishes they were alone, then maybe he’d be able to express how important this feels.

Fortunately, this is Tycho, who figured out a long time ago how to understand what Wedge is thinking or feeling without forcing him to put it into words. Tycho is his friend, his comrade, his brother. They stand in front of each other, smiling, with too much joy on their faces for all the losses they’ve taken. Wedge would probably just stand there, grinning like a fool, but thankfully Tycho is much better at all of this feelings stuff than he is, and after a few moments he pulls Wedge into a hug. And Force, isn’t it good to be held by someone you love?

Wedge hadn’t forgotten exactly, but he hadn’t thought of it in ages, he hadn’t been aware of needing it until this very moment. They stand there for what might be a long time, Wedge isn’t sure. They stand there for long enough. 

Then there are introductions. He gets to introduce Tycho to Caj, say, “This is lieutenant Vercet, I’d be helpless without her,” and watch how Caj doesn’t object, or argue, just settle into even more perfect posture, because he’s simply stating a fact.

Then there are briefings to attend. So many briefings. Wedge has to share everything he knows about the state of the Republic, which isn’t much, and isn’t interesting. And he has to be caught up on everything that’s happening with the Resistance, which is too much to learn in a day, but they have to start somewhere. He learns about the stormtrooper who defected, and the Force-sensitive girl who found Luke’s old lightsaber. He learns that Amilyn Holdo died a hero’s death. She couldn’t stand him. They used to get into the worst arguments in strategy meetings, in budget meetings, in groups of friends trying to decide where to go out to dinner. He’ll miss her.

The briefings are almost boring, except that he’s with Tycho, and Winter, and Leia, and the Dameron kid, and between briefings he eats lunch with Snap and Norra. They tell Caj stories that are supposed to embarrass him, but he’s gotten too old to be embarrassed, and the stories he has about Snap are much better. It’s nice. Wedge just wishes it hadn’t taken an entire system being destroyed to get him here.

At the end of the day, after hours of debriefing, planning, hoping, and prognosticating, when it seems like they’ve finally reached some sort of equilibrium, Leia puts her hand on top of his and says, “You’d better come to my rooms for tea, if you can stay awake long enough.”

She looks serious, and sad. He wonders what it is that she wants to discuss without the Resistance braintrust and his command staff listening in. It must be important. Or maybe it’s nothing, and she just wants to drink tea, and talk about old times. It doesn’t matter. Wedge will be there. Wedge would do anything she asked. She’s always known what things were too much to ask.

It was never Leia asking him to join the Resistance. Snap asked, again and again, but Wedge had practice saying no to Snap. Holdo asked before she cut ties with the Admiralty, folding the question into an insult he probably deserved. The Dameron kid asked once, when their paths crossed on the outer rim, but Wedge has never known how to talk to kids who look at him with stars in their eyes. Leia herself never asked him to leave the Republic, just like Tycho never asked, because they knew how stubborn his loyalty could be, that he had to figure it out for himself, there’d be no hurrying him along. 

He got here eventually.

Leia’s quarters look exactly like he expected them to — the best room in a place where there aren’t any nice rooms, unadorned, occupied by someone who knows they could leave at any moment, and has walked away from too many homes to count. Still, the arm chairs here are more comfortable than the ones in the meeting room, and she really does make them tea, that wasn’t just a line. Maybe she has bad news. Maybe she just wants to drink tea. She looks tired. Dameron helped her out of her chair at the end of the meeting, and she held onto Wedge’s elbow all the way down the long corridor as they walked to her room, which could have been a show of affection, but that wouldn’t be like her.

He waits as she fixes the tea. If she wanted help, she’d ask for it. She knows he’d do anything she asked. He closes his eyes, just for a second. He’ll have to find a shuttle to take him back to his ship when they’re done talking here. They’d find him a room on base where he could crash for a few hours if he asked, but it’s important to show his people he’s still their captain. 

Being in an underfunded, understaffed, military body, was a lot less exhausting when he was twenty. He had more energy, and no one expected him to make decisions. He just had to fly, shoot, maybe keep a few other pilots in line. Easy.

Leia hands him a steaming cup of tea. It’s too hot to drink, but he brings it to his face, and takes a deep breath. It’s herbal, bitter, and reminds him of a brief moment where he thought he’d found a home that would last forever.

“I have to tell you what really happened on Crait,” Leia says, an auspicious way to start a conversation. “It’s important that you know I wasn’t trying to hide anything, not from you. At first, no one knew what happened, because no one was there. And then as we got closer to re-joining the fleet, pieces of what happened came out, and people put together a narrative that they liked, and that narrative is good for the Resistance, so we’ve let it stand, even if it isn’t entirely accurate.”

Wedge sighs. He hates these public relation games, which Leia knows. “I’m not going to make a fuss, sell whatever banthashit you want if it gets recruits.”

The truth is the First Order are evil, and the Resistance needs help, and Wedge can live with whatever story makes the general public finally see that.

“I wasn’t looking for your blessing, but thanks anyway,” Leia says. “It’s important that you really know what happened down there because…”

Leia’s voice wavers. She takes a deep breath. When did they both get so old? Leia has always been tiny, but the way she seems fragile is a new development.

“I’m going to hate whatever the truth is, aren’t I?” Wedge asks. He doesn’t know what could be so bad that Leia wouldn’t want to tell him. The PR story is sad enough. He knows they haven’t altered the death toll, and he can’t think of anything the Resistance might have done to get away that he wouldn’t approve of.

“Luke was there,” Leia says.

Everything stops. Wedge doesn’t know if he’s breathing. His hands shake, and hot tea sloshes onto his knee, but he doesn’t feel it. Luke was there, on Crait, and the story the world has been told, of the plucky young Jedi swooping in to save the day at the last minute isn’t true, can’t be, because Luke was there, and that’s not who he is anymore. No longer the bright hero, shining, smiling. He’s gotten old. He walked away, gave up on all of them. Wedge might have been waffling on joining the Resistance, but he was still doing what he could to make the galaxy a brighter place. Not Luke though. Luke left.

Wedge devotes so much energy to not thinking about how Luke left, it doesn’t even register anymore. At all times 20% of his being is ignoring the fact that Luke left, making him numb to Luke’s absence instead of letting it consume him. Luke left — he left the academy, and Wedge, and whatever life they might have had together. Years past. Wedge got good at being alone. Gave up on Luke ever coming back. But Luke was on Crait. And he isn’t here now. Wedge figures he can fill in the blanks.

“So, Luke was there, and he saved the day, and then he fucked back off to wherever again, and you didn’t want everyone to know what a bastard he is.”

Leia smiles, sadly, and Wedge is so mad that Luke’s bullshit makes his sister look so sad. Wedge would do anything to keep that sadness out Leia’s eyes.

“Luke was there, and he saved the day, and then he died.”

Wedge drops his tea. It spills everywhere, cup shattering over the polished cement floor, and that’s good. That gives him something to do. He has to mop up the tea, and pick up the glass, and make it safe for Leia to walk around barefoot in her starkly un-homey bedroom. He can do this for her.

He can’t do anything about Luke being dead.

Leia puts her hand on his knee before he can move to start cleaning up the spill. He stays still. He’d do anything she asked him to. She’s family, and he loves her, and believes in her, and doesn’t want to cry in front of her today. 

Leia tells him the whole story. How Rey had found Luke, on some desolate island, a spit of land on a nowhere planet. How Rey had left, not dragging Luke back with her, which seems like an obvious mistake. Then when the Resistance was decimated, corned on Crait, Luke projected there, buying enough time that Rey could rescue them in the Falcon. And then he died. Alone, on an island Wedge has never heard of.

Wedge doesn’t want to believe it. There isn’t a body. Nobody saw it happen. The only evidence is that Leia felt it in the Force — her brother is dead. Wedge spent so long holding onto the idea that even if Luke was gone, even though Luke had left, at least he wasn’t dead. He held onto that for years, based on nothing but Leia’s belief that her brother was still alive.

“So.” Wedge takes a deep breath, tries to steady himself, looks into Leia’s brown eyes, so unlike her brother’s. “What do we do next?”

That’s all there is to it, right? Luke is dead, which isn’t all that different from having left, not on a day-to-day level. It doesn’t change the fact that they’re in the middle of a war, and that they have to move quickly if they’re going to survive, let alone win.

“We let him become a legend. Luke disappeared, and there’s no reason why he can’t stay lost, a myth, a rumor. We don’t go out of the way to encourage it, but we won’t need to. The Jedi make a great myth. Maybe the truth comes out when the war is over, maybe it doesn’t, I don’t really care. I just know that the truth wouldn’t make my life any easier right now.”

She isn’t wrong. 

Wedge can’t see anything good that would come from taking the time to recognize Luke’s death. It’s better to just keep going. The Hosnian system is gone. The Republic is gone, in any meaningful sense. No one needs another reason to mourn. The love of his life (and it’s easier to think of Luke like that now, knowing he’s never coming back, knowing that there will never be an opportunity to forgive him) is dead, and Wedge doesn’t want to stop for a moment. They’re fighting a war, and stopping, even for a moment, could be the difference between survival or defeat. 

Maybe just a moment. But what would he even do with a moment? What did he really lose? Someone who was already gone. Leia has lost so much — a brother, a husband, a son. Her parents, her planet. 

A thing Wedge forgets, a thing he chooses to forget, about “the good old days” is how alone they all were. It became a family because they were the only people left in the world. He was an orphan. Luke and Leia were orphans. All of his friends were orphans, or came from places they didn’t want to talk about. What did any of them have left, except for the Rebellion? 

The crew Wedge brought with him are the folks who don’t have anyone waiting for them at home. He doesn’t know for sure, but he imagines Leia’s people are mostly the same. Norra and Snap have each other, when they can stand each other. Last he heard Kes Dameron is still kicking, but that was ages ago, he could be wrong. Point being — it’s hard to have a life and believe in something bigger than yourself. Which is fucked up, but true, at least in Wedge’s experience. He’s old enough that he’s mostly made his peace with this; that nothing will come before the cause.

That wasn’t always true. There was a fleeting instant where he tried to lead a different sort of life. But that was hard, and they were bad at it, and didn’t put in as much effort as they should have. They loved each other, but drifted, and when Luke finally left, Wedge barely felt the right to be heartbroken. And now… He just needs a moment, to put the pieces together correctly.

There really isn’t anything else to say. Luke’s dead. The rest of the galaxy doesn’t need to know what really happened on Crait. They have to make battle plans, decide how his junk bucket of a capital ship fits into her decimated fleet. There are decisions to make about personnel, and resources, and command structures. But that will wait until morning. Wars shouldn’t be planned by generals, talking alone in the middle of the night. They should be planned carefully, with many voices taken into consideration. And if the Force allows it, wars should be planned on a full night’s sleep.

Wedge leaves Leia’s rooms, and makes his way down bare duracrete hallways, retracing his way back to the command center, where hopefully someone will be awake to give him a ride back to his ship. If not, maybe he’ll head to the hangars, commandeer an X-Wing, and make his own way up. 

Caj is sitting at the central console, attention split between working on her tablet, and the conversation around her. Dameron’s gesturing a lot, and the girl with the braids is rolling her eyes at him, and they all seem excited about something. 

Caj stands up when she sees him, and makes her way across the room, narrowly dodging Dameron’s astromech. “I talked to Connix, and someone’s waiting to bring us up whenever you’re ready.”

Wedge is so grateful that he doesn’t have to think anymore tonight. He follows Caj, who follows the girl with the braids, who must be Connix. They get to the hangar, and one of the Resistance pilots takes them up in an old shuttle. He doesn’t try to backseat pilot, he just leans back into the seat, closing his eyes for a moment. Luke is dead, and it doesn’t really matter, because Luke left a long time ago, and was never going to come back. Wedge knew that, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

“Do you want to go over tomorrow’s schedule?” Caj asks. “I arranged it so we’ll head down to the surface after morning meeting, and then you’re supposed to sit in a strategy session, and then talk to General Organa about personnel changes. In the afternoon there’s a discussion about starfighter deployment that I thought you’d want to go to, but it isn’t required. Lunch in between.”

“I trust you,” he says. Whatever her plan for tomorrow is, he’s sure it’s a good plan. He’s just tired. Tired, and a different kind of lonely than he had gotten used to. For as much as it seems like history is repeating itself, the galaxy _does_ keep changing, and sometimes he just needs a moment to catch up. 

Wedge’s first full day with the Resistance fleet, the thought of the day is: “wherever you go, there you’re at.”

He wakes up before his alarm, in a startlingly good mood. He’s where he belongs. The Hosnian system has been destroyed, the love of his life is dead, and he doesn’t know how they’re going to beat the First Order. But he’s where he belongs, and he’s doing what he’s meant to do. He checks his personal messages, replies to half a dozen old friends, reassuring them that he’s still alive, smiles at the bad jokes Wes forwarded. He doesn’t feel optimistic exactly, but about as good as imaginable considering the state of the galaxy. Today they will do good work.

Caj is sitting in the hallway when he opens the door.

“You know, I can get to morning meeting on my own,” he says.

“I know,” she says. “You’re on my way to the conference room, and I like our morning routine.”

“I like it too,” he says. “I’ve been thinking, we should have an officer designated to interface between the _Faith_ and the Resistance,” He’s been thinking about this all night. 

“That’s a good idea,” Caj says, before he can offer his whole explanation.

He’s got a whole speech planned out, that he feels pretty attached to. The thing about being a General is that he can keep talking as long as he wants to, and Caj will just have to put up with it. That’s how most of his conversations with Ackbar went. He continues, “Because without a designated officer, it would be that our quartermaster talks to their quartermaster, and our starfighters talk to their starfighters, and our mechanics talks to their mechanics, and it would all work out eventually.” Probably, at least. “But it would be better if someone was looking over all of it, the flow of supplies and personnel, making sure it was all distributed efficiently. And I suppose I could be that person, but I think Leia wants me to think about strategy, and diplomacy, and also, it’s the sort of logistical quagmire that I don’t enjoy. So you should do it.”

“Sir?”

“You should be the officer in charge of coordinating between our ship and the Resistance. It will probably come with a promotion, but I’ll have to talk to Leia. Captain, probably, but that sounds a little pedestrian, we might have to make something up.” Wedge has missed being a part of a military that allowed people to invent ranks as needed. 

“We’ll have to find you a new aide,” Caj says. “And you’ll have to be nice to them. You don’t even realize you’re doing it, but you can be very intimidating at first, because you’re famous for breaking rules, which is disconcerting in a commanding officer.”

“I was nice to you,” Wedge says. He really was! Or, at least he tried. “Look, that’s not the point — you can train me to be less intimidating, I’m sure whoever you pick as your replacement will be excellent. The point is, I’ve been doing this for, Force, forty years. Forty-five, I don’t know. I used to imagine that we’d win, and it would be over, and everyone would be happy and live in peace. But obviously I was wrong, and now I know that the important thing is leaving the fate of the galaxy in good hands.”

“Sir—” Caj sounds choked up, which wasn’t what Wedge was trying for. This wasn’t supposed to be a whole thing. He just thinks she can do better than looking after him.

“I trust you,” Wedge says, because it’s true, and worth saying.

Caj straightens her back, falling into the upright military posture that she uses like a shield. “Thank you, sir.” She takes a deep breath, and smiles. “I’ll start outlining my duties, and you can talk to General Organa about who my Resistance counterpart will be. We’ll figure out the details eventually, but right now, the important thing is that we can’t be late for morning meeting.”

No, they can’t be late for morning meeting. The Hosnian system is gone, and Luke is dead, and they can’t be late for morning meeting. Wedge never wanted to be a general, or a mentor — he fought against it, turning down promotions, downplaying his heroics. But here they are. Life happens.


End file.
